Canada’s Trudeau saw a shift in India relations after a U.S. plot was revealed (CBC). After the United States alerted New Delhi to its role in an aborted plan to assassinate a Sikh separatist leader on American territory, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated he detected a shift in India’s tone with Ottawa, the CBC reported on Wednesday.
“In an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corp., I think there is a beginning of an understanding that they can’t bluster their way through this and there is an openness to collaborating in a way that perhaps they were less open before,” Trudeau stated.
“There’s an understanding that maybe just churning out attacks against Canada isn’t going to make this problem disappear,” he stated.
Upending diplomatic relations between the two countries, Trudeau declared on September 18 that Canadian security services were investigating plausible claims that Indian government operatives were involved in the June murder of 45-year-old Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader, in British Columbia.
The U.S. Justice Department filed charges against a man in November on suspicion of masterminding a botched attempt to kill a Sikh separatist, a citizen of the United States of India who resides in New York City. The department said that an Indian government official was responsible for the conspiracy. American authorities withheld the target’s identity.
The push for a Sikh homeland in northern India gained additional momentum when Canadian officials pressured India to assist in their probe into the June murder following the U.S. discoveries.
New Delhi strongly refuted Canada’s claim, which sparked a diplomatic spat in which both nations expelled their diplomats and possibly jeopardized trade negotiations. Conversely, India declared that it was looking into and taking the U.S. charges seriously.
The U.S. and Canada are working to strengthen their relations with India to counteract Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific area.
“We don’t want to find ourselves in a conflict with India at this time over this. It is the trade deal that we wish to be working on. Trudeau told the CBC, “We want to advance the Indo-Pacific strategy.”
However, upholding people’s rights, safety, and the rule of law is fundamental to Canada. And that’s precisely what we intend to do,” said Trudeau.
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