India's foreign minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed regional and global issues including the economic crisis in Sri Lanka and what the US described as Russia’s “brutal aggression” of Ukraine and its implications for global food security.
The meeting held in Cambodia on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum and against the backdrop of a spike in US-China tensions over the visit to Taiwan by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Neither side officially said that the current Taiwan situation was discussed in the meeting.
US State Department spokesperson said, “they discussed Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and emphasised that both nations stand with the people of Sri Lanka and support their aspirations for a return to economic and political stability through democratic and constitutional processes, adding the leaders shared efforts to promote a “free, open, secure and prosperous” Indo-Pacific.
The two leaders had met last month in Bali on the sidelines of a G20 summit. Blinken had then too discussed the implications of Russia’s “unprovoked aggression”. There was no Indian readout of the meeting but Jaishankar tweeted that he discussed the “ever strengthening” India-US relationship and the global situation.
Jaishankar also participated in the India- ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Phnom Penh in which he underlined “strong convergence” with ASEAN on many issues, including Indo-Pacific, UNCLOS, connectivity, terrorism, Myanmar and Ukraine. Myanmar along with the Taiwan situation dominated the ASEAN meetings in Cambodia with the group threatening to rethink its “five-point consensus” with the military government if more political prisoners were executed. Although the complex nature of its ties with Myanmar, owing primarily to joint efforts to check insurgency along the border areas, India joined other UNSC members last month in condemning the executions.
