- Coas Munir’s encounter with President Trump adds to India’s discomfort.
- Trump’s inability to understand concerns affect ties: New Delhi.
- INDIA makes movements to facilitate restrictions on investment from China.
US President Donald Trump’s lunch meeting with Pakistan’s military boss received a private diplomatic protest from India in a warning to Washington about the risks of their bilateral ties, while New Delhi calibrates relations with China as hedge, officials and analysts said.
The meeting and other tensions in the US-India relationship, after decades of thriving ties, have thrown a shadow in the trade negotiations, they said as Trump’s administration weighs duty against one of its great partners in the Indo-Stockhavet.
India accuses Pakistan of supporting what it calls cross -border terrorism and has told the United States that it sends the wrong signals by increasing Field Marshal Asim Munir, three senior Indian government officials who are directly aware of the case told Reuters.
It has created a tender place that will inhibit the relationship in the future, they said.
Pakistan denies categorical accusations that it supports militants who attack Indian goals and that New Delhi has not provided any evidence that it is involved.
Bands in the US India have been strengthened in the last two decades despite smaller hiccups, at least partly because both countries seek to counter China.
The current problems are different, said Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based senior fellow at Asia Pacific Foundation Think Tank.
“The frequency and intensity that the United States works with Pakistan, and apparently does not take Indian concerns, especially after India’s recent conflict with Pakistan, has contributed to a bit of a bilateral discomfort.”
“The concern this time is that one of the triggers to wider tensions that is Trump’s unpredictability extends into the trade area with his approach to customs,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office and India’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has previously said it had “noted” for the Trump-Munir meeting.
An American official said they do not comment on private diplomatic communication and that the United States enjoys strong relationships with both India and Pakistan.
“These conditions are on their own benefits and we do not compare our bilateral relationship with each other,” the US official said.
Lunch in the white house
The United States seems to have taken another tack of Pakistan after a brief conflict broke out between the nuclear armed rivals in May, when India launched strikes on what it called terrorist destination over the border in response to a deadly attack on tourists from the majority of Hindu communities in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) the previous month.
After four days of air dog matches, missile and drone attacks, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire.
Hindu-Majority India and Islamic Pakistan have shaken regularly and fought for full-scale war since independence in 1947, two of them over the disputed Kashmir region.
A few weeks after the May matches, Trump hosted Munir for lunch in the White House, a big boost in ties with the country, which had largely disappeared during Trump’s first period and Joe Biden. It was the first time that an American president hosted the leader of Pakistan’s army in the White House, which was not accompanied by senior Pakistani civilian officials.
“Tourists were murdered in front of their families after finding their faith,” said Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaisankar in May, referring to the Kashmir attack.
Pakistan says it is Modi driven by religious extremism and that his fire of Hindu nationalism has trampled on the rights to India’s great Muslim minority. Modi and the Indian government say they do not discriminate against minorities.
Field Marshal Munir’s meeting in the White House added to India’s Chagrin about Trump’s repeated insistence on the fact that he averted nuclear war between the two nations by threatening to stop trade negotiations with them. The comment pulled a sharp response from Modi that told Trump that the ceasefire was obtained through conversations between the army commanders of the two nations and not American mediation.
In the days following his meeting on June 18 with Munir, people from Modi’s office and India’s national security advisor’s office separate calls to their American colleagues to register a protest, two of the officials said. The protest has not been previously reported.
“We have communicated to the United States our attitude towards cross -border terrorism, which is a red line for us,” said a senior Indian official. “These are difficult times … Trump’s inability to understand our concerns creates some frown in ties,” he added, sought anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
Trump and Munir discussed the continuation of a collaborative collaboration in which the United States has previously given weapons to Pakistan, a non-nato-allied, and talked about ways to further strengthen ties, a Pakistani reading of the meeting said.
It raised concern in New Delhi, as any weapon Pakistan receives from the United States, could be turned on for India if the neighbors end up in conflict again, two of the officials said.
Harder attitude
Despite what used to be public exhibitions of Bonhomie between Trump and Modi, India has taken a slightly harder attitude against the United States in recent weeks, while trade discussions have also slowed down, the Indian officials and an Indian industry lobbyist said.
Modi rejected an invitation from Trump to visit Washington after the G7 meeting in Canada in June.
Earlier this month, New Delhi suggested retaliatory tasks against the United States in the World Trade Organization, which showed that trade negotiations did not go as smooth as they were before India-Pakistan clashes.
India, like other nations, tries to find out a way of dealing with Trump and calibrating ties with China as a hedge, said Harsh Pant, Foreign Policy Leader at India’s Observer Research Foundation Think Tank.
“Certainly there is an outreach to China,” he said. “And I think it’s mutual … China reaches out too”.
Last week, India’s Jaisankar made his first visit to Beijing since a deadly border in 2020 between Indian and Chinese troops.
India also makes movements to facilitate restrictions on investments from China that were imposed after the clash in 2020.
The thaw comes despite India’s prickly relations with China and Peking’s close ties.
But New Delhi’s concern about Trump’s own commitment with China, which has varied from conciliation to confrontational, seems to have contributed to its shift in attitude to Beijing.
“With an unpredictable Dealmaker in the White House, New Delhi can’t rule out Sino-US-April,” said Christopher Clary, associate professor of political science at the University of Albany, New York.
“India is troubled by Chinese help to Pakistan and grows Chinese influence elsewhere in India near abroad, such as Bangladesh. Still, New Delhi has largely concluded that it should respond to creeping Chinese influence by focusing its pressure on its closest neighbors and not on China.”
