Pompeo uses India visit to spice up anti-China rhetoric

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is currently on an official visit to India, has said that Washington and New Delhi must work together to confront the “threat” posed by China. 

Pompeo arrived in New Delhi on Monday along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He is scheduled to meet Indian leaders on Tuesday before heading to Sri Lanka.

His visit comes as Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a face-off in the western Himalayas, where both sides have been trading accusations of violating the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto frontier between the two countries.

India and China have not been able to agree on their nearly 3,500-kilometer border, over which they went to war in 1962.

“Today is a new opportunity for two great democracies like ours to grow closer,” Pompeo said before the talks with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.

“There is much more work to do for sure. We have a lot to discuss today: our cooperation on the pandemic that originated in [the Chinese city of] Wuhan, to confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s threats to security and freedom to promoting peace and stability throughout the region,” he said, in overtly anti-China comments.

The two sides will later on Tuesday sign a military agreement to share sensitive satellite data.

The Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation would provide India with access to a range of topographical, nautical, and aeronautical data that is considered vital for better accuracy of its missiles and drones.

It will also allow the United States to provide the latest navigational technology on US-supplied aircraft to India.

US efforts to bully nations to pick up the anti-China gauntlet is bound to fail: Scholar

Pompeo

China slams US interference in ties with Sri Lanka

Meanwhile, China has criticized the United States’ “bullying” of Sri Lanka, which Washington has been pressuring over its relations with Beijing.

The Chinese Embassy in Colombo raised the objection in response to remarks by Dean Thompson, the senior US State Department official for South and Central Asian affairs, who has urged Sri Lanka to pick a side between China and the US, ahead of Pompeo’s visit to the South Asian country.

“We are firmly opposed to the United States taking the opportunity of the State Secretary’s visit to sow [discord] and interfere in China-Sri Lanka relations, and to coerce and bully Sri Lanka,” the Chinese embassy said in a statement late on Monday.

China has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka as part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to link China by sea and land with southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa through an infrastructure network on the lines of the ancient Silk Road.

Pompeo’s visit to Sri Lanka comes as part of an Asian tour seen as part of an attempt to counter China’s influence in the region. He will head to the Maldives and Indonesia after Sri Lanka.

China also slammed the timing of Pompeo’s visit. He will be accompanied by a large delegation even as the country is struggling with the new coronavirus.

“Is it helpful to local epidemic prevention and control? Is it in the interests of the Sri Lankan people?” the Chinese embassy asked.

The United States’ relations with China have grown increasingly tense under the US President Donald Trump administration and his State Secretary Pompeo. Washington has clashed with Beijing over trade, the South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Pompeo has openly called for regime change in China.

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