Acknowledging that India’s relationship with China has not been ‘great’ for the last four years, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said tensions between the two nations would continue until the issue of forward deployment of their militaries by the two sides is addressed.

”In terms of our own relationship with China, I think it’s a long story, but the short version is that we had agreements on how to keep the border peaceful and tranquil, and those agreements were violated by China in 2020,” he said in an obvious reference to the military stand-off between the two countries that began in April 2020 in eastern Ladakh.

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At a discussion at Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Mr Jaishankar said the forward deployments of their militaries by the two sides and the resulting tensions have cast ”a natural shadow over the rest of the relationship”.

On India’s trade with China, he pointed out that sourcing out of China is something inevitable for any country. ”Because if you are consuming, if you are not manufacturing and consuming, that’s probably where you get a lot of things the cheapest. And even if you are manufacturing, a lot of your components and your semi-process materials come out of there. So, what happens is that, in a sense, trade with China at one level is almost autonomous of the political, of the rest of the relationship.”

The Indian minister rejected a suggestion that India is keen on an alternative currency that can serve as a reserve mechanism.

On the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Mr Jaishankar said India’s public position is that it does not believe that differences or disputes between countries can be settled by war. ”A second public position is we do not believe that we’re actually from the battlefield going to get a decisive outcome. So, if you take two, then three is if you’re not going to get a decisive outcome, at some point, in some form, there has to be a negotiation. If there is a negotiation, whenever we get there, then obviously there has to be some preparation or some exploration and some communication between the participants, which is primarily Russia and Ukraine,” he elaborated.

On the conflict in West Asia, he said India considers the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October last year a terrorist attack. ”We understand that Israel had a need to respond, but we also believe that any response by any country has to take into account international humanitarian law, that it must be careful about any damage or any implications for civilian populations.”

He said India is very much concerned at the possibility of a broadening of the conflict.