3/7/14, "India bats for Russia interests," India Telegraph, CHARUSUDAN KASTURI.
New Delhi, March 6: "India
has said Russia holds “legitimate interests” in Ukraine, becoming the
first major nation appearing to publicly lean towards Moscow at a time
it is largely isolated internationally over its military intervention in
the Crimean Peninsula.
India’s first
official response came on a day Crimean MPs voted to secede from Ukraine
and join Russia, prompting the US to activate some sanctions. ( )
National security
adviser Shivshankar Menon has said India wants the confrontation between
the West and Moscow over Ukraine resolved peacefully. But he added
that it also hoped that the interests of Russia and other stakeholders
were taken into account.
“We hope that
whatever internal issues there are within Ukraine are settled
peacefully, and the broader issues of reconciling various interests
involved, and there are legitimate Russian and other interests
involved….We hope those are discussed, negotiated and that there is a
satisfactory resolution to them,” Menon said today.
Menon’s reference to Russia’s “legitimate interests” sparked a sharp diplomatic response from Kiev.
“We are not sure
how Russia can be seen having legitimate interests in the territory of
another country,” Roman Pyrih, the media secretary at the Ukrainian
embassy in New Delhi, said. “In our view, and in the view of much of the
international community, this is a direct act of aggression and we
cannot accept any justification for it.”
The US, UK,
Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan — the seven G8 nations other
than Russia — have criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
decision to send troops into Ukraine’s southeastern Crimean Peninsula.
“There are
principles of international law, and Russia violated these in entering
the territory of another nation,” Pyrih said. “If there are any
legitimate interests, those can be discussed diplomatically, not by
sending in troops.”
The larger G20
grouping of the world’s 20 largest economies is not as united in its
criticism of Russia, and includes several key allies of Moscow. But even
South Africa and China, which have close economic ties with Russia,
have so far only issued relatively anodyne public statements seeking a
peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis....
Russia is India’s
largest defence supplier — and an ally that stood by New Delhi in times
when much of the rest of the world treated it as a pariah, like when
India tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998.
But Menon’s statement and New Delhi’s reluctance to criticise Putin stem also from a deeper concern.
India, officials
said, is convinced that the West’s tacit support for a series of
attempted coups against democratically elected governments — in Egypt,
Thailand and now Ukraine — has only weakened democratic roots in these
countries.
“We are watching what is happening in Ukraine with some concern,” Menon said.
The foreign
ministry, later in the day, issued a statement adding that the presence
of “more than 5,000 Indian nationals, including about 4,000 students, in
different parts of Ukraine” had left India “concerned” at the
“escalation of tensions”.
On Friday, when
Russian troops were entering Crimea, the Ukrainian ambassador to India,
Oleksandr Shevchenko, met external ministry affairs officials at South
Block and sought New Delhi’s support. Shevchnko, Ukrainian officials
said, left without any commitments.
Shevchenko has also asked for a meeting with Menon. But Menon has not yet given Shevchenko time, Pyrih said." via Zero Hedge
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