NEW DELHI: India's External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has said that India-China relations are undergoing a difficult phase.
"China has violated the agreement of not to bring military forces to the Line of Actual Control. For 45 years there was peace and there was stable border management, there were no military casualties on the border. That changed. We had agreements with China not to bring the military forces to the Line of Actual Control and the Chinese violated those agreements,’’ Dr Jaishankar said while speaking on India’s relations with South-East Asian Countries, during the Munich Security Conference.
"Now the state of the border will determine the state of the relationship. The India-China bilateral relations are undergoing a very difficult phase since the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) violated border pacts,’’ the external affairs minister noted.
One of the panelists at the MSC pointed out to Dr Jaishankar that a poll reflects a low level of trust between countries in the South-East Asian region and India. In fact only 16.6 per cent of voters in the poll have expressed their confidence in India.
To this Dr Jaishankar said, "I am a politician, I believe in polls but I have never seen a poll which has made any sense to me when it comes to foreign policy.’’
He also that our relations with ASEAN was progressing well.
"We have much stronger security cooperation with ASEAN. We have strong bilateral relations with Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam, among others,’’ he added.
Dr Jaishankar is now headed to France, where he will attend the Indo Pacific Paris forum.