New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stance on ensuring safety of seafarers, importance of maintaining the freedom of navigation and unimpeded commerce through the international waterways continues to draw appreciation from various political quarters with Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday detailing how ably PM Modi conveyed the message during the G7 Summit meetings in France this week.
“I think that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was particularly able to convey a message that we would all agree with, namely that commercial shipping should not be targeted in a war. These are civilian sailors, as you know, pretty much every ship, whatever country’s flag is flying, has an Indian crew on board,” Tharoor told IANS in an exclusive interview.
“The Americans may say that they have no idea what crew is in a ship and, if a ship is violating their blockade, they will hit them. But the facts still remain that these are civilian ships and civilian crew and they should have found a non-lethal way of stopping the ship, such as by intercepting it, boarding it, or disabling it,” he added.
He said that the PM Modi gave a “fair message” considering that the safety of shipping is important to every country in the world.
Tharoor also noted that everybody has to be more careful in wartime, and the ship owners will also have culpability in forcing their crew to take risks when one side is threatening to attack if their blockade is violated.
Commenting on the US-Iran peace deal, the Congress MP said that peace will only last when everyone feels like they have won.
“In all peace deals, my friend, everyone has to feel they have won, otherwise a peace will never last. You cannot have a peace deal that essentially involves the surrender of one side, going back to Versailles after the First World War, which led to the Second World War,” Tharoor noted.
The former diplomat said that the best peace agreements are where both sides can give something back to their people. “You don’t want to create a situation where this peace doesn’t last because one side is made to feel humiliated.”
“Americans can say, see Iran will no longer enrich uranium, they have pledged in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to dilute their enriched uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran, on the other hand, can say that under the MoU, we are gonna get the sanctions lifted and we are going to get unfreezing of all our assets that have been frozen for decades,” he said.
During the G7 Summit meetings in Evian this week, PM Modi had specifically voiced safety and security of seafarers while emphasising that India hopes to see a rapid return of peace and stability in West Asia following the signing of an agreement between the US and Iran.
“We have always emphasised the importance of maintaining the freedom of navigation and unimpeded commerce through the international waterways in the region. Prime Minister specifically emphasised the issue of the safety and security of seafarers. He noted how hundreds of thousands of Indian seafarers essentially provide a global public good by serving on maritime platforms that serve the global community and serve global maritime trade in a big way, and why therefore their safety and security should be a common concern of the global community and this is something that he voiced not just in his intervention at the G7 summit outreach meetings but also in his bilateral meetings with several leaders,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told reporters in Paris on Thursday.
(IANS)
