External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday chaired a meeting of the ministry’s Consultative Committee where the latest Indo-Pacific developments and those related to the Quad were discussed.
The meeting was attended by MPs Anand Sharma, Sumalatha Ambareesh, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Dr Rajdeep Roy and Prem Charan Gupta. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, however, was not present.
Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla made an elaborate presentation following which the members present lauded the government for achieving 1 billion Covid-19 vaccinations, saying it had sent a positive message to the world.
Sources said one of the members raised the issue of delay in WHO’s approval for Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, to which Jaishankar is said to have replied that the WHO’s decision could not second guessed since “none of us are privy to the details and rather none of us are in the technical committee”.
To a question asked by an MP on the future of SAARC and Pakistan, Jaishankar is said to have told the committee that SAARC is not “leading us anywhere and in particular Pakistan, given the fact that they want to do work five days a week and 40 days possibly treat it as a weekend smuggling terrorism in India.”
Sources added that on China, Jaishankar told the committee that the situation along the LAC is being looked after by the Defence Ministry and that India’s foreign policy cannot be based on Beijing alone.
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