“India supports dialogue and diplomacy,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the BRICS Summit. As a result, one of the most crucial meetings of the world’s top leaders of over two dozen non-Western countries in Kazan, Russia, ended up underscoring the effectiveness of New Delhi’s peace diplomacy.
On the sidelines of summit, PM Modi not only pushed his peace initiative on Ukraine war with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also had engagement with China on “border peace” and “mutual trust” with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While his meeting with Putin was part of a series of talks PM Modi has held with Russian President and his Ukrainian counterpart to broker peace in the war raging in Eurasia, the bilateral meeting with China was the first in last five years.
The stage for the Modi-XI bonhomie was set by diplomats and military leaders of the two countries on the eve of the BRICS Summit when they agreed to return to the status quo along the Line of Actual Control before May 2020, when soldiers of the two countries were engaged in a calamitous clash in Ladakh.
“It should be our priority to ensure there is peace and stability along our border. Mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual sensitivity should be the basis of our bilateral relations” PM Modi said.
His sentiments were reciprocated by Xi: “It is important for both sides to have more communication and cooperation, properly handle our differences and disagreements, and to facilitate each other’s pursuit of development aspirations.”
The three-day BRICS Summit was the first after the induction of five new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), at the previous Summit in South Africa last year.
With around 20 others seeking the grouping’s membership, it was the largest gathering of world leaders in Russia in decades and was held at a time when Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars are raging in the world. Dark shadows are hovering over other potential conflict points in the Indo-Pacific. International attention was, however, rivetted around crucial meetings PM Modi had with Russian President Putin as well Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Iran, one of the principal benefactors of the resistance groups Hamas and Hezbollah which are fighting Israel, was also represented at the summit. Both, Russia and China, have firmly sided with Iran. PM Modi’s talks with Iran’s newly-elected President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit were basically confined to bilateral relations.
However, the Middle East conflict figured during discussions on regional connectivity and International NorthSouth Transport Corridor (INSTC) during the wide-ranging discussions PM Modi had with leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE present at the BRICS Summit.
