NEW DELHI, Sept 20: The United States President Joe Biden has urged India to cooperate in the investigation by Canada into the killing of the Khalistan Tiger Force chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
The White House’s strategic communications Chief, John Kirby has said the president was “mindful of the serious allegations made by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau about Nijjar’s murder and urged India to cooperate. Mr Trudeau alleged on Monday that Indian government agents were involved in the June 18 killing of the separatist leader in Canada, an allegation that India has rejected.
“Certainly the President is mindful of these serious allegations … and they are very serious…and we support Canada’s efforts to investigate this,” Mr Kirby said. “We believe a fully transparent, comprehensive investigation is the right approach so that we can all know exactly what happened and of course we encourage India to cooperate with that.”
Asked if the US as a ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence sharing partner of Canada, knew what the allegations were based on, Mr Kirby demurred, saying he wanted to respect the sanctity of the investigation. In terms of the fallout if the allegations were true, Mr Kirby said once the facts were available “you can start to look at recommendations or behaviours you might want to pursue.”
The U.S. is going to stay in touch with both its partners, India and Canada, about this issue, Mr Kirby said. The U.S. was “deeply concerned” about the allegations, U.S. NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson had said on Tuesday, adding that it was critical that “the perpetrators be brought to justice.”
In conducting its probe into Mr Nijjar’s death, the government of Canada had used “energetic, quiet diplomacy” with the Modi government over the last few weeks, according to Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae. Mr Rae alleged that the Indian government was not engaging with the Canadian side adequately, prompting Mr Trudeau to publicise the issue.
“I don’t think anybody who really looked at this objectively would say that Canada has anything to gain from making the statement that the Prime Minister made yesterday. It was not a partisan statement, it was a statement about [sic] deep concern.” Mr Rae said. “We didn’t see much coming from the other side,” he said, adding that this prompted Mr Trudeau to go public.
(Manas Dasgupta)