TRUMP OFFERS TO HELP INDIA, CHINA RESOLVE ’VERY NASTY’ STANDOFF
US Prez reiterates offer to mediate in the ‘very nasty’ India-china border dispute
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has again expressed his readiness to “help” India and China resolve their border standoff, which he described as “very nasty”, repeating an offer that has previously been rejected by New Delhi.
In May, the external affairs ministry tacitly turned down Trump’s offer to mediate on the issue by saying India was directly engaged with China to peacefully resolve the standoff.
“While we’re at it, we’re talking about China and India are going at it pretty good on the border, as you know. It’s been very nasty,” Trump told reporters on Friday at a White House briefing. “We stand ready to help with respect to China and India, if we can do anything we would love to get involved and help. And we are talking to both countries about that.”
Trump expressed confidence that Indian-americans will vote for him in the November 3 presidential election, citing the “incredible” turnout at the “Howdy Modi” event in Houston last September. “We have great support from India. We have great support from Prime Minister Modi,” he said.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has again expressed his readiness to “help” India and China resolve their border standoff, which he described as “very nasty”, repeating an offer that has previously been rejected by New Delhi.
In May, the external affairs ministry tacitly turned down Trump’s offer to mediate on the issue, made through a tweet, by saying India was directly engaged with China to peacefully resolve the standoff.
“While we’re at it, we’re talking about China and India are going at it pretty good on the border, as you know. It’s been very nasty,” Trump told reporters on Friday at a White House briefing.
“We stand ready to help with respect to China and India if we can do anything we would love to get involved and help. And we are talking to both countries about that,” the US President said.
Trump had in May extended an offer to mediate the standoff. “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 tweeted then, prompting both sides to turn down the offer.
On another previous occasion, New Delhi rejected Trump’s remarks regarding mediation between India and another country. In July 2019, India dismissed his remarks, at a joint news briefing along with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran
Khan, that Modi had asked him to help resolve the Kashmir issue.
At that time, Trump contended he had spoken directly with Modi about Kashmir. “And he actually said, ‘Would you like to be a mediator, or arbitrator? I said ‘Where?’, and he said ‘Kashmir, because this has been going on for many, many years’,” Trump had said at the time.
On Friday, Trump also expressed confidence that Indian-americans will vote for him in the November 3 presidential elections as he cited the “incredible” turnout at the “Howdy Modi” event in Houston last September.
Responding to a question about his expectations from Indian-american voters, the President said: “We have great support from India. We have great support from Prime Minister Modi and I would think that Indian people would be voting for Trump.”
“We had an event in Houston, as you know, and it was a fantastic event. I was invited by Prime Minister Modi… it was incredible. It was actually incredible and the Prime Minister could not have been more generous.”
The Trump campaign recently released a collection of clips from the Houston event and the “Namaskar Trump” rally that the US President attended in Ahmedabad this February, seeking to project his support among India-americans. The video, based on a slogan chanted at his re-election rallies, is called “4 More Years”.
The US President has claimed he has the support of more Indian-americans than Kamala Harris, the Indian-descent Democratic nominee for vice-president. Though there are no numbers or polls to back that up, others in his campaign have also made the claim.
There are an estimated 1.8 million Indian-american voters in the US – they have historically favoured Democrats. But only 50% of the registered voters among them identified as Democrat in a survey of Asianamerican voters in the run-up to the 2018 mid-term elections; 18% identified themselves as Republicans; and the rest 32% were “non-identifiers”.