NEW DELHI: India envisages free, open, inclusive and peaceful Indo-Pacific built on rules-based order, said External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar while delivering a lecture at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University today.
He was addressing researchers, scholars, think tanks and students. Jaishankar said India envisaged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to be at the centre of the Indo-Pacific. “Our ASEAN partners will surely note that our interactions with them have grown, not reduced, as a result of the Indo-Pacific.”
The minister said that Quad is the most prominent plurilateral platform that addresses contemporary challenges and opportunities. The Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the Quad, is a strategic forum comprising India, the United States of America, Japan and Australia, which advocates a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The Quad has strongly opposed any coercive, provocative or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo and increase tensions in the area. China is engaged in territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea. India and China are engaged in a border standoff in eastern Ladakh. The two countries have so far held 16 rounds of military-level talks to resolve the border row.
“We consider the Indo-Pacific as a region that extends from the eastern shores of Africa to the western shores of America. This is an increasingly seamless space that is home to more than 64% of the global population that contributes over 60% of world’s GDP. About half of the global trade happens through the maritime trade routes in this region,” Jaishankar said.