Australian High Commissioner to India Barry O'Farrell has said that Australia supports continued moves by India for de-escalation.
Highlights:
- Australia has backed India against China, for the first time since India-China border clash.
- Australian High Commissioner to India met Indian foreign affairs minister on Thursday.
- Australia signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement with India earlier this year.
"Australia urges restraint at LAC (Line of Actual Control) & supports continued moves by India for de-escalation," said Mr O'Barrell after meeting India's External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar.
"In my meeting with EAM today, I told him Australia opposes any attempts to unilaterally alter status-quo which only increase tension & instability," he told Indian media persons and later shared the statement on Twitter.
Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with Chinese troops at a disputed border site in the western Himalayas in May this year - in the first deadly confrontation between the two Asian giants since 1975.
The two sides blamed each other for the high altitude skirmish, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warning that the army had been given free reign to respond to any new violence.
Many Australian experts had said that Australia should support India against China.
Dr David Brewster, a Senior Research Fellow with the National Security College, Australian National University where he works on Indian Ocean and Indo Pacific maritime security, says Australia should openly support India against China.
Listen to the conversation with Dr David Brewster:
"I think Australia has to step up on the issue. In past decades Australia has largely avoided taking a very clear stand on the conflict, and that's consistent with Australia's general approach of not, as far as possible, becoming too closely involved in territorial disputes between other countries", explains Dr Brewster, whose recent edited volume India and China at Sea: Competition for Naval Dominance in the Indian Ocean addresses Indian and Chinese perspectives about their roles in the Indian Ocean and their evolving naval strategies towards each other.
Mr O'Farrell also praised India's swift & decisive actions against the Coronavirus pandemic.
"India's swift & decisive actions particularity the early lockdown, clearly saved lives. India used its lockdown to increase the number of COVID hospitals, isolations beds & strengthen its testing & its health system generally," said the High Commissioner.
He emphasized that India’s a significant and growing market for Australian exports.
“In 2019/20, two-way agricultural trade with India was worth over a billion dollars with Australia exporting nearly $600 million of agriculture, fishery and forestry products,” said Mr O’Farrell speaking at the Australian Grain Industry Conference (AGIC) 2020, which was held virtually this week.
Australia signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement with India earlier this month bringing the relationship to a new level.
