The Hindu : International : "India may not join U.S. against China"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 04, 2005

International

International

"India may not join U.S. against China"

P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE: India may not allow itself to be co-opted by the U.S. to contain China, according to Lee Kuan Yew, elder statesman and Singapore's Minister Mentor.

Indicating this, during a "conversation" with the World Economic Forum at its `Asia Roundtable 2005' held in Singapore late last week, Mr. Lee cited India's "sense of their own destiny" and of independence on foreign policy matters for his assessment. To questions from Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of World Economic Forum, Mr. Lee said he was "not sure" whether India would "necessarily be co-opted" by the U.S. into a "bloc which will in effect contain China."

The overall theme of the roundtable was shift in global economic focus towards Asia.

Mr. Lee noted that the U.S. had offered to help India become a "great power." While he thought that "the Indians want to be a great power," Mr. Lee said, "they are not Japan," close U.S. ally. In his view, the Indians "are big enough to chart a course of their own."

During the Cold War period, India had instituted the non-aligned movement and the Afro-Asian group and "kept a certain independence" in action despite maintaining close relations with the then Soviet Union.

A new factor now was that "the Chinese are reaching out very hard to the Indians," Mr. Lee said, pointing to the "very warm reception" that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accorded his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in New Delhi recently. Emphasising how China and India were now seeking to learn from each other, Mr. Lee said: "I do not see the end-result [as] a ring around China."

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