New Delhi: India and the US can “work through” differences without “derailing” the larger cooperative agenda, US Principal Deputy National Security Advisor (NSA) Jonathan Finer said Monday at the Global Technology Summit in New Delhi, organised by the external affairs ministry and think tank Carnegie India.
Prior to the summit, Finer met with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, NSA Ajit Doval and foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra, apart from leading a delegation for the first comprehensive mid-term review of the India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), with his Indian counterpart, deputy NSA Vikram Misri.
This is the first publicly announced engagement between India and the US after the latter last week indicted an Indian national in an alleged plot to assassinate Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
“The US and India have a complicated history. We have not always been wholly aligned. We have not always found it easy to work together as economic partners. We have not always found it easy to be on the same side of issues geopolitically… there are many difficult issues that remain in this relationship, right up to the present day,” Finer said at the summit.
He added: “What we have demonstrated, I think, throughout the course of not just this administration…is the bipartisan effort that has gone back many administrations in the US, and frankly many administrations in India, (that has brought) us to the point where not only can we seize some of the important opportunities that the world presents for us geopolitically and economically but we can work through our differences in a constructive way without derailing that cooperative agenda.”
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‘Mature relationship’
Finer asserted that Washington D.C. and New Delhi “have established a mature relationship” and pointed out that the two sides may not always agree on issues but the relationship allows both sides to work through any “differences”.
“I believe the US and India have established a mature relationship. That mature relationship enables us to identify opportunities that are in our mutual interest and pursue them. We are doing that in any number of ways — through fora like iCET, through the Quad (comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the US),” Finer explained.
“It also allows us to work through areas of difference… No two countries are going to be perfectly aligned, including countries with issues, and histories and cultures as strong and in some ways as different as the US and India,” he added.
Finer further said: “But the one thing that we have demonstrated is even on issues that are most challenging in our relationship, we can work through them constructively and get to a better place.”
On the US-China relationship, Finer made it clear that Washington cannot allow “competition” with China to veer towards “conflict” and that it was necessary to “get it right”. The two countries have been in a trade war since 2018, started by the previous Trump administration and continued by the current Biden administration.
‘Murder-for-hire’ charges
Last week, the US department of justice slapped an Indian national named Nikhil Gupta with murder-for-hire charges in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen and founder of the banned organisation Sikhs for Justice (SFJ). The charges were made in an indictment before a New York district court.
According to a statement released by the justice department, US prosecutors have claimed that Gupta, 52, who resides in India, conspired with others to carry out the assassination on directions of an Indian government employee in a “$100,000” deal.
Gupta allegedly conspired with an employee of the government of India — named ‘CC-1’ in the indictment — to carry out the hit.
Gupta was arrested by Czech authorities on 30 June on the basis of an extradition treaty between the US and the Czech Republic, the statement said.
After the Biden administration learnt of the plot in late July, a flurry of meetings took place between top US intelligence officials including US NSA Jake Sullivan, Central Intelligence Agency director William J. Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Indian government officials, including Jaishankar and Doval.
The external affairs ministry has announced that it has constituted a “high-level” inquiry panel in connection with the alleged assassination plot.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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