Washington D.C.: The simmering border tension between India and China has had an interesting fallout. It has catapulted the US, which is engaged in a peculiar slanging match with China over the COVID-19 pandemic, into the amphitheatre of Ladakh. With that the façade of India and the US not hobnobbing on the fluid situation at the Line of Actual control has come off. PM Modi and US President Donald Trump on Tuesday had a telephonic conversation during which the two leaders exchanged views on the situation on the Sino-India border.
The PMO release said that the two leaders discussed the COVID19 situation and the need for reforms in the World Health Organisation. Tweeting about their conversation, PM Modi said, "Had a warm and productive conversation with my friend President Donald Trump. We discussed his plans for the US Presidency of G7, the Covid-19 pandemic, and many other issues."
During the telephonic conversation, Trump also invited Modi to attend the next G-7 summit to be held in the US. This is the first interaction between the two leaders since the US President offered to mediate in the "raging border dispute." Trump had also made it a point to mention during a White House briefing that PM Modi seemed to be in a bad mood over the Ladakh standoff. Though the Indian side was at pains to assert later that it had not sought US assistance and that Modi and Trump had not had a telephonic conversation for some time, the matter came to a head with the tensions on the border showing no sign of ebbing.
With that, the two sides seem to have dropped all pretence of not working in tandem. An indication came from the US on Monday when it said it was "extremely concerned" by the Chinese aggression against India along the Line of Actual Control.
"I strongly urge China to respect norms and use diplomacy and existing mechanisms to resolve its border questions with India," said Elliot Engel, chief of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. Trump’s formal invite to PM Modi to attend the G-7 Summit is also as a bold gambit, to counter China, which is overreaching itself militarily in Ladakh and elsewhere. The US has already indicated that it is the unofficial onset of the cold war with Beijing and India seems to have an important role to play in Trump’s scheme of things.
