BEIJING, Sept 7 – After the US President Donald Trump toned down his rhetoric following a post on Friday local time in which he claimed that the US has “lost India and Russia” to China, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a post on the X platform on Saturday that “India and the US have a very positive and forward-looking” partnership.
Trump on Friday said in a social media post that the US appears to have lost India and Russia to China.
Later on Friday, however, he told reporters he didn’t think the US had lost India to China, Reuters reported.
“I don’t think we have,” he said. “I’ve been very disappointed that India would be buying so much oil, as you know, from Russia. And I let them know that,” according to Reuters.
Trump also told reporters that he will always be friends with Modi. “I’ll always be friends, but I just don’t like what he’s doing at this particular moment. But India and the US have a special relationship. There’s nothing to worry about. We just have moments on occasion,” per Reuters.
Some Indian media outlets closely followed the latest remarks made by the US leader on the India-US relations. The Hindustan Times said that amid ongoing trade tensions with India, Trump on Friday said he will always be friends with Modi, praising him as a “great prime minister.”
The Times of India said on Friday that Trump has been making scathing remarks using social media to call the US-India relationship “totally one sided” and accusing New Delhi of imposing “the highest tariffs in the world.” India has rejected the charges as unjustified and unreasonable, the Indian media reported, as the Indian government insists that its energy and agricultural needs cannot be compromised.
In a statement to some media outlets such as Reuters and the South Morning China Post following Trump’s post, spokesperson for China’s embassy in the US Liu Pengyu said China’s development of relations with any other country aims at enhancing the common interests and well-being of the two peoples and is never targeted at any third party.
“The world should be a stage for win-win cooperation, not a battlefield where one side wins and the other loses,” Liu said.
“The interactions among countries should be based on equality, and no country should be a pawn in geopolitical struggles,” the spokesperson added. – Global Times
