Indian EAM S. Jaishankar attends 60th Munich Security Conference in Germany. As part of the conference, Dr Jaishankar addressed a panel discussion on ‘Growing the Pie: Seizing Shared Opportunities,. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and US Secretary of State Blinken will also take part in the panel discussion along with the External Affairs Minister.
The 60th Munich Security Conference got underway yesterday. The three-day meeting offers a unique opportunity for high-level debates on the world’s most pressing security challenges.
The talks between the External Affairs Minister and his Canadian counterpart Melanie Joly focused on the present state of bilateral ties. The two leaders also exchanged views on the global situation.
#WATCH | External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi engage in a brief interaction on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
(Source: Munich Security Conference) pic.twitter.com/Z4T7RGoqvK
— ANI (@ANI) February 18, 2024
The External Affairs Minister and European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell exchanged perspectives on the current global situation. Dr Jaishankar and UK Foreign Minister David Cameron discussed India-UK bilateral cooperation as well as global and regional issues.
Dr Jaishankar yesterday discussed issues related to bilateral cooperation as well as those of key global and regional concern with prominent leaders including US Secretary of State Blinken and his British counterpart David Cameron. In a social media post, Dr. Jaishankar said that during his meeting with Mr. Blinken, their talk centred on the situation in West Asia, Ukraine, and the Indo-Pacific. He said they reviewed the continuing progress in India-US bilateral ties.
Indian EAM S. Jaishankar attends 60th Munich Security Conference: Jaishankar answers smartly to the questions about India-Russia ties
At a conference, asked about India’s foreign policy priorities in the backdrop of observations that it is traversing from “non-alignment to all alignment”, S Jaishankar replied, “Is that a problem why should that be a problem? If I am smart enough to have multiple options, you should be admiring me. Is that a problem for others? I don’t think so, suddenly in this case. We try to explain what are the different pulls and pressures that countries have. it’s very hard to have that unidimensional relationship.”
EAM further added, “We try to explain what are the different pulls and pressures that countries have. It’s very hard to have that unidimensional relationship.”
“I do not want you, even inadvertently, to give the impression that we are purely and unsentimentally transactional. We are not. We get along with people, we believe in things, we share things, but there are times when you are located in different places, different levels of development, different experiences, all of that gets into it,” Jaishankar added.
He added, “So life is complicated, life is differentiated… Good partners provide choices, smart partners take some of those choices.”
The 60th Munich Security Conference (MSC) got underway an in-person event from February 16-18, at its traditional venue, the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich, according to an official statement.
This year’s conference is being held under the chairmanship of the German ambassador to the US Christoph Heusgen.
Jaishankar also sought to project India as ‘non-West’, having extremely strong relations with Western countries that are getting stronger.
“I think, it’s important today to make a distinction, between being non-West and anti-West, I’d not only characterize India as a country, which is non-West but which has an extremely strong relation with the Western countries, getting better by the days. Not everybody necessarily in that grouping might qualify for that description, but the contribution the BRICS has made, if one looks at G7 and how it evolved into the G20,” he said.
“I think in a way, those additional 13 members who came into this bigger grouping, 5 of them are BRICS members, the fact that there was another group which was meeting regularly and discussing at the meeting, I think certainly was input into the expansion of G7 into the G20. So, I think we did our service to the world,” the EAM added.
In 2023, Russia supplied more than 35 per cent of India’s total crude imports, equating to around 1.7 million barrels per day, as reported by S&P Global Commodity Insights.
According to reports, Russia’s oil exports in March 2023 surged to their highest level since April 2020 in physical terms, driven by increased oil product supplies. Export revenues also climbed by USD 1 billion compared to February, reaching USD 12.7 billion, as per TASS, a Russian news agency.