Modi calls for unimpeded trade, cautious on Beijing

SINGAPORE, June 2, (RTRS): Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for equal access at sea and in the air for all Asian countries at a major defence conference on Friday, but avoided singling out China’s claims to the hotly contested South China Sea.

Modi outlined his regional vision at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, attended by defence chiefs from over 40 countries, including US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

The Indian leader’s visit to Southeast Asia, which he described as the centre of a new era of cooperation in a region that spanned the coast of Africa to the US West Coast, comes amid growing unease about China’s growing naval assertiveness.

The region is also caught up in what could be a global trade conflict after the US Trump administration said it would follow through on its threat of tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports. Washington and Beijing have threatened tit-for-tat tariffs on goods worth up to $150 billion each.

“India does not see the Indo-Pacific region as a strategy or a club of limited members ... and by no means do we consider it directed at any country,” Modi said in a keynote address to the forum.

“We should all have equal access and the right under international law to the use of common spaces on the sea and in the air that will require freedom of navigation, unimpeded commerce and peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law.”

The term “Indo-Pacific” has grown in usage across diplomatic and security circles in the United States, Australia, India and Japan in recent years, shorthand for a broader and democraticled region in place of “Asia-Pacific”, which some people have said places China too firmly at the centre.

In a nod to India’s growing regional stature, the US military’s Pacific Command in Hawaii formally changed its name to the US Indo-Pacific Command in a ceremony on Wednesday.