Immediate challenges have not distracted India from broader strategic goals, the Foreign Secretary said.
New Delhi:
India has dealt with the “worst crisis” in decades along its border with China with “firmness and maturity” despite facing the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Thursday.
In an address at a leading think-tank in Paris, Mr Shringla mentioned two recent terrorist incidents in France, one of which he said had its origins in Pakistan, noting that the civilised world needs to act with firmness to address the threat of terrorism.
Speaking about the major geo-strategic issues, he said the immediate challenges have not been able to distract India from broader strategic goals, especially in the Indo-Pacific Region where it is moving purposefully at multiple levels to create an “open, inclusive architecture”.
Mr Shringla arrived is on a week-long tour of France, Germany and the UK. His visit to France came as the country grapples with another terror attack.
Three people have died in a knife attack at a church in Nice on Thursday which was described by French President Emmanuel Macron as an “Islamist terrorist attack”.
Mr Shringla, in his address at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, said India and France face similar non-traditional security threats in the form of radicalism and terrorism, and the fight today is not against specific communities or individuals but against a “radical politico-religious ideology”.
Referring to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, the foreign secretary said India has continued to ward off the menace from its western border.
About the threats of terrorism and radicalism, Mr Shringla said radical ideology espouses violence and separatism, very often fanned and supported by foreign influence, adding such forces seek to destabilise pluralist societies.
“It was horrifying to hear about the two recent terrorist incidents in France, one of which, as is very often the case, had its origins in our western neighbourhood — Pakistan,” he said.
“For the past three decades, we have experienced what unbridled radicalism can wreak and what malevolent violent forces it can unleash. The civilised world needs to act together and act with firmness to address this threat to our cherished democratic value systems,” he added.