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Ladakh row figures in Rajnath Singh's telephonic talks with US Defence Secretary

Last Updated 10 July 2020, 17:04 IST

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to his United States counterpart Mark T Esper over phone on Friday, even as India and China started pulling back front-line troops from the scenes of the face-offs along the disputed boundary between the two nations.

Singh and Esper discussed China’s military aggression, which was on display not only along its disputed boundary with India, but also in South China Sea, East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and elsewhere in Indo-Pacific. They also discussed India-US bilateral defence cooperation as well cooperation with Japan, Australia and other nations, sources in New Delhi said.

They had last spoken over phone on May 29 and discussed the stand-off between Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) which had started along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the de facto boundary between the two nations – in eastern Ladakh a few weeks before.

India had several back-to-back engagements with the US during its eight-week-long military stand-off with China.

The US Navy sent aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Nimitz to sail into the South China Sea, sending out a message in response to aggression by China.

“I've spoken with Foreign (External Affairs) Minister (S) Jaishankar a number of times about this (Chinese aggressive actions). The Chinese took incredibly aggressive actions. The Indians have done their best to respond to that,” the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Washington on Wednesday.

The Defence Minister and his US counterpart spoke to each other on a day the Prime Ministers of Japan and Australia, Shinzo Abe and Scott Morrison, agreed to expand the military cooperation among the “quad” nations to counter China’s expansionist moves in Indo-Pacific.

Though the ‘Quad’ first came into existence in 2007, it soon fizzled out. But it had a low-profile re-launch in November 2017, with senior diplomats of the four nations participating in consultations and calling for “free and open Indo-Pacific” to oppose expansionist moves by China. It was elevated to the level of Foreign Ministers in September 2019, with Pompeo and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar joining their counterparts from Australia and Japan in a four-nation meet in New York.

India of late quietly added a military heft to the Quad by inking an agreement on Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement (MLSA) with Australia. The agreement is intended to open up the military bases of India and Australia for each other’s army, navy and air forces. India is also likely to sign a similar agreement with Japan soon. It had already signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US in August 2016.

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(Published 10 July 2020, 14:39 IST)

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