Scholz wants India to carry European burden to resolve Ukraine War
Photo credit MEA (Arindam Bagchi)
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 25: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz by all accounts wants an early end to the Ukraine War. Germany is worst hit as a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Scholz had specially flown to Beijing for a less than 24-hour trip to Beijing to fete Chinese President Xi Jinping after securing third term as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party last year.
German economy is in dire straits solely because of the Ukraine War. The Zero Covid Policy of XI had further wrecked the German economy. He had leaned on XI to intervene with Russia to end the war. Which remains elusive. Now, Scholz wants India for having the presidency of the G20 to do what needs to be done to deal with the issue. “Indian will fully comply with what needs to be done with this (Ukraine War),” Scholz said in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India had a day before abstained on a United Nations resolution on Russia. Modi on his part has stressed that the Ukraine War warrants joint efforts of all the stakeholders. Scholz on his part argued that Asia, Africa and developing countries need to be protected from the consequences of the Ukraine War.
Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad have voiced concerns of the cascading effects of the Ukraine War on developing nations. Scholz was seen in New Delhi echoing the growing views outside the western nations over the Ukraine War. The voices in the Global South are seen getting sharper against the European obsession with war. There are also growing concerns that neither Germany nor the US has made any serious effort to find a way out of the war, while they continue to scale up their arms supply to Kyiv.
“World is suffering as consequence of Russia’s aggression. War violates fundamental principles, to which we all have agreed, you do not change borders through use of violence. War in Ukraine led to immense losses, destroyed infrastructure, energy grids; it is a catastrophe,” said Scholz
While Scholz sought all attention to the Ukraine War, Modi steered the discourse to the cross-border terrorism, which misses the focus of the European nations, as they have begun doing business with Pakistan, taking off the Islamic country from the Financial Action task Force (FATF) grey list even while there had been no visible changes in the state policy of Islamabad which has terrorism as its bedrock.
“There’s active cooperation between India, Germany in fight against terrorism and separatism. Both countries agree that concrete action is necessary to end cross-border terrorism,” said Modi after his bilateral talks with Scholz. Incidentally, Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto had raked up the Kashmir issue in the presence of his German counterpart last year, which had invited India’s strong condemnation.
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