Sun 21 June 2020:
The United states is talking to both India and China to help them resolve their ongoing border tensions, President Donald Trump said on Saturday.
“It’s a very tough situation. We’re talking to India. We’re talking to China. They’ve got a big problem there,” Trump told reporters at the White House before boarding Marine 1 on his way to his first post-COVID-19 election rally in Oklahoma.
“They’ve come to blows, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll try and help them out,” Trump said when asked about his assessment of the situation between India and China.
“If 20 were martyred on our (Indian) side, then there would have been at least double the casualties on their (China) side,” V.K.Singh, the minister for roads and transport, told TV News24 in an interview broadcast late on Saturday.
China has not said anything about any losses in the hand-to-hand combat that took place in the heavily contested Galwan Valley in the western Himalayas, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and at least 76 injured.
The United States has accused China of escalating border tension with India and other neighbours by trying to take benefit of these countries busy fighting coronavirus pandemic.
“The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has escalated border tensions with India, the world’s most populous democracy. It’s militarizing the South China Sea and illegally claiming more territory there, threatening vital sea lanes,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, in a major speech on China a day earlier.
In his virtual address on ”Europe and the China Challenge” during the 2020 Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Friday, Pompeo described the ruling Chinese Communist Party as a “rogue actor.”
Early this week, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president is aware of the situation and the US is monitoring the situation between Indian and Chinese forces along the line of actual control in Eastern Ladakh.
During a phone call on June 2nd that Trump had with Indian Prime Minister Modi, they did discuss the situation on the Indo-China border, McEnany said.
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