New Delhi, 19/8: India on Thursday tacitly hit out at China for criticizing the Quad, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stating that opposition to the four-nation coalition was possibly a ‘unilateralist’ approach rooted in the desire to control the choices of other nations.
With the more-than-two-year-long stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) still continuing, Jaishankar also said that the relations between the two neighbouring nations were going through “an extremely difficult phase”. He put the blame squarely on China, which amassed a large number of troops along its disputed boundary with India in eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020, resulting in the stand-off that took the ties between the two to a new low.
“If there are reservations (about the Quad) in any quarter, these stem from a desire to exercise a veto on the choices of others. And possibly a unilateralist opposition to collective and cooperative endeavours,” Jaishankar said, delivering a lecture at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok on Thursday.
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