Onlykashmir.in News Desk
India’s Ministry of External Affairs has said that a range of issues featured in the discussion between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi.
Briefing the media in the national capital, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the Prime Minister referred to India’s concerns during the exchange and underlined that both sides should demonstrate sensitivity towards each other’s core concerns. He said the relationship should be guided by what he described as the three mutuals: mutual respect, mutual interest and mutual sensitivity. The formulation has become the standard Indian framing for engagement with Beijing, reflecting New Delhi’s position that normalisation of ties cannot proceed independently of the situation on the boundary.
The briefing also covered maritime developments affecting Indian nationals abroad. The Ministry extended its gratitude to Omani authorities for ensuring the safe rescue of Indian nationals injured in an attack on a Panama-flagged vessel off the coast of Oman on Sunday. Thirteen of those aboard have been safely rescued, while one Indian seafarer remains missing. Indian crews form a substantial share of the global merchant marine workforce, and incidents of this kind have a direct bearing on thousands of families across the country.
On the wider regional picture, the spokesperson said India had condemned attacks on Saudi sovereign territory, including those directed at civilian infrastructure and economic assets. Such attacks, he said, undermine regional stability and threaten freedom of navigation through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and these actions are plainly unacceptable to India. He added that India hoped for an early restoration of peace and stability in the region.
The concerns are not abstract for New Delhi. The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait is one of the world’s critical shipping chokepoints, carrying a significant volume of India’s westbound trade and energy imports. Disruption there forces vessels on to longer routes around the Cape of Good Hope, raising freight costs and insurance premiums with consequences that eventually reach domestic prices. India’s position, consistently held, has been that commercial shipping lanes must remain outside the theatre of regional conflict, and Tuesday’s remarks reinforced that line without departing from it.
