Pompeo: China has 60K soldiers on India’s border
WASHINGTON: China has amassed more than 60,000 troops on India’s northern border, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said as he hit out at Beijing for its “bad behaviour” and the threats it poses to the Quad countries.
The foreign ministers from the Indo-Pacific nations known as the Quad group - the US, Japan, India and Australia - met in Tokyo on Tuesday in what was their first in-person talks since the coronavirus pandemic began The meeting took place in the backdrop of China’s aggressive military behaviour in the Indo-Pacific, South China Sea and along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
“The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border, Pompeo told The Guy Benson Show in an interview after his return from Tokyo wherein he attended the second Quad ministerial with his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia.
“I was with my foreign minister counterparts from India, Australia, and Japan a format that we call the Quad, four big democracies, four powerful economies, four nations, each of whom has real risk associated with the threats imposed attempting to be imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. And they see it in their home countries too,” he said. “They absolutely need the US to be their ally and partner in this fight,” he said.
“But they’ve all seen it, whether it’s the Indians, who are actually having a physical confrontation with the Chinese up in the Himalayas in the north-eastern part of India, the Chinese have now begun to amass huge forces against India in the north whether it’s the Australians who did the simple thing of saying the Chinese screwed this deal up with the virus, and we’d like to understand what happened and said we ought to have a full investigation, and in exchange for that, the Chinese Communist Party began to extort, coerce, bully the Australians,” Pompeo said.
Talks won’t make China change aggressive stance: NSA
China has attempted to “seize” control of the LAC with India by force as part of its territorial aggression, US’ national security advisor has said, underlining that time has come to accept that dialogue and agreements will not persuade Beijing to change. The Chinese territorial aggression is also true in the Taiwan Strait.