We can be good partners with allies including India: US amid Indo-China border tension

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that China has been making threats, like the one that is happening on its border with India, for a long time, adding that Washington can be “good partners” with its allies including India considering the military capabilities of Beijing.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the Secretary of State said that China is using a tactical situation on the ground to its advantage, adding that the threat posed by Beijing is real.

“The Chinese Communist Party has been on this effort, on this march, for an awfully long time. They'll certainly use a tactical situation on the ground to their advantage. But each of the problems that you identified there are threats that they have been making for an awfully long time,” he said in a response to a question on the aggressive Chinese behaviour on the Sino-India border and the South China Sea.
 “Threats like the one that is happening on its border with India, they have been making for an awfully long time. With respect to the Chinese Communist Party's military advances, they are real,” he added.

He further said that Chinese President Xi Jinping is intent on building out his military capabilities, while asserting that US Department of Defence is doing everything it can to understands the threat.

“I am confident that under President (Donald) Trump, our Department of Defence, our military, our national security establishment will keep us in a position where we can protect the American people, and indeed we can be good partners with our allies from India, from Australia, from South Korea, from Japan, from Brazil, from Europe, all around the world,” he said, PTI reported.

“We can be good partners alongside them and ensure that the next century remains a Western one modeled on the freedoms that we have here in the United States,” he said.

The impasse has worsened the bilateral relations between the two countries that had improved three years ago after the Doklam deadlock.

India-China border tension
For the past few weeks, Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a tense standoff in eastern Ladakh. Tension in the region flared up on May 5, when around 200 army personnel from India and China clashed along northern bank of the Pangong Lake in eastern Ladakh.

Days after Ladakh clashes, scores of Indian and Chinese military personnel were involved in a face-off near Naku La Pass in the Sikkim sector of the Indo-Sino border on May 9.

The Indian and Chinese troops have been engaged in eyeball to eyeball situation at two locations in the Galwan Valley, near Aksai Chin, and a spot about 200 km away at the Pangong Lake with both sides enhancing its presence and building up troops.

Trump offered to mediate India-China border dispute
Last week, US President Donald Trump had offered to mediate between India and China to de-escalate simmering border tension between the two, stating that his country is "willing to arbitrate their raging dispute".

"We have informed both India and China that the United States is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute," he had said in a tweet.

 Times Now