With German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expected to visit India later this month — around the time when the Russia-Ukraine war will complete a year – his Foreign and Security Policy Advisor, Jens Plötner, said on Monday that Delhi’s voice is “heard clearly” and “listened to” in Moscow, and that is important.
Scholz is expected to come to India in the last week of February — the dates that are being explored by the two sides are February 25-26. This is significant since the Russia-Ukraine war will complete a year on February 24, and Scholz’s first standalone visit is a signal that Delhi plays an important role in Berlin’s strategic calculus.
Plötner, who met his counterpart National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on Monday to prepare the ground for Scholz’s visit, said the two countries are working together on a range of areas, and identified climate change, economic potential and geopolitics as the three major areas of potential cooperation.
Calling it a “classic triple-win situation”, he underlined the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “Now, obviously as wonderful as our bilateral relations are, they are not evolving in a kind of clean environment. We are embedded in a very messy international situation, which is full of challenges. The Russian war against Ukraine. This is a European war. But it is a war with global repercussions,” he said.
Underlining that the global repercussions, in an immediate sense, would mean “food shortages” and “skyrocketing energy prices” leading to inflation, he said: “But it also has another global implication — that a permanent member of the (UN) Security Council has decided to violate the charter of the United Nations, invading a smaller country simply because it can and is stronger and bigger, and that cannot go unchecked. Because otherwise, I think, the world would become a jungle…where the rule of the strongest would prevail.”
Emphasising that Berlin and Delhi are on the same page, Plötner said: “Now, in India, we feel we have a partner who… believes in the rules-based international order, is a strong proponent of the multilateral world and the multilateral system, a believer in the United Nations. And that is why we come together, working on the basis of these principles to see how we react to this world disorder and to see how we can make those values prevail, which we believe are the best basis for peaceful coexistence in our planet among the family of nations.”
Asked about India’s possible role in mediating between Russia and Ukraine, he said: “I have great admiration for Indian diplomacy…we don’t have a shortage of mediators. But we have an acute shortage of Russian willingness to stop this war and get out of its neighbouring country.”
“I think the voice of New Delhi is one which is heard very clearly and which is listened to in Moscow. And that makes it all the more important,” he said. Doval had met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week, where they discussed the strategic ties. On China’s aggression on India’s border, Plötner said, “China is an important global player. So there is hardly any discussion in the diplomatic realm which doesn’t also at one point turn to China.”
On the tension along the India-China border, Plötner said: “We see the border tensions with concern,… and this is not an area where arms should speak… (it is) where dialogue is needed. And I see this willingness on the Indian side to engage.” Plötner and Doval also discussed the situation in Afghanistan. (Indian Express)