The immediate challenges did not distract India from broader strategic goals, the foreign minister said.
New Delhi:
India has faced the “worst crisis” in decades along its border with China with “firmness and maturity” despite the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic, Foreign Minister Harsh Vardhan Shringla said Thursday.
In a speech to a leading think-tank in Paris, Mr. Shringla referred to two recent terrorist incidents in France, one of which he said had its origins in Pakistan, noting that the civilized world must act firmly to deal with the threat of terrorism.
Speaking about the main geostrategic issues, he said the immediate challenges had not been able to distract India from broader strategic goals, especially in the Indo-Pacific region where it is deliberately moving at multiple levels to create a “Open and inclusive architecture”. .
Mr. Shringla arrived on a weeklong tour of France, Germany and the UK. His visit to France comes as the country grapples with another terrorist attack.
Three people died Thursday in a knife attack in a church in Nice, described by French President Emmanuel Macron as an “Islamist terrorist attack”.
Mr. Shringla, in his address to the French Institute for International Relations, said India and France face similar non-traditional security threats in the form of radicalism and terrorism, and that the struggle today is not against specific communities or individuals but against a “radical politico-religious ideology”.
Referring to Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism, the Foreign Minister said India continued to ward off the threat from its western border.
On threats of terrorism and radicalism, Mr. Shringla said radical ideology espouses violence and separatism, which are very often fanned and supported by foreign influence, adding that these forces seek to destabilize pluralist societies.
“It was horrible to hear about the two recent terrorist incidents in France, one of which, as is very often the case, had its origins in our western neighborhood – Pakistan,” he said.
“Over the past three decades, we have experienced what unbridled radicalism can bring about and the malicious violent forces it can unleash. The civilized world must act together and act decisively to face this threat that weighs on our precious systems of democratic values, “he added.
