External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh on Thursday. The meeting comes at a time when US-China tension is high over US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
In his opening remarks at the meeting, which took place on the margins of an ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting, Blinken referred to concerns over “challenges” in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and the situation in the Indo-Pacific.
“A warm conversation to start meetings on the sidelines of ASEAN Ministerial in Phnom Penh. Discussed the ever strengthening India-US relationship and the global situation with US Secretary of State @SecBlinken,” Jaishankar tweeted.
Blinken said the US and India are strong proponents of the ASEAN centrality in the Indo-Pacific, according to the US State Department. “We are both strong proponents of ASEAN centrality. We have a shared vision together for a free and open Indo-Pacific that we work on in so many different ways every single day,” Blinken said.
“And of course, we have some immediate challenges that we’re both concerned with, to include the situation in Sri Lanka, Burma, and a number of other hot spots,” he said. “So I very much look forward to once again being able to go through a number of these issues with my friend, and then we’ll both head over to our meetings.”
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that Jaishankar and Blinken “exchanged views on global and regional issues, including Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine and the implications it has had on food insecurity around the world”.
India has so far sought to maintain diplomatic balance between Russia and the US-led West on Russian invasion of Ukraine. While it has expressed concern at the killings in Bucha, it has stopped short of condemning Moscow’s actions.
