Biden Administration Trying to Urge India to take a clear position on Russia-Ukraine crisis: US diplomat
New Delhi: The US government, in the upcoming days – may force the New Delhi government to take a clear position on Russia and Ukraine crisis. “The Biden Administration is trying to urge India to take a clear position on the Russia-Ukraine crisis,” US diplomat Donald Lu said on Wednesday.
India has decided to take a neutral stand in a conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Voting results displayed on screens at the UN General Assembly showed that 141 nations voted in favor of the move condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and five nations were against it, with 35 countries, including India, abstaining.
Lu noted that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has been on the “frontlines of that battle” and that US President Joe Biden and other senior officials in the State Department have been relentlessly conducting various “very serious” high-level dialogue with their Indian counterparts over Ukraine.
The top US diplomate stated that “India has focused on two things when trying to explain its position, one that it continues to want to leave on the table the possibility of a diplomatic resolution of this conflict. The second thing that they emphasize is India has 18,000 students still in Ukraine, and they are trying to work with both the Governments of Ukraine and Russia to safeguard those.”
Responding to criticism made by the lawmakers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lu said, “Let me say that all of us have been working to urge India to take a clear position, a position opposed to Russia’s actions.”
