External affairs minister S Jaishankar and his British counterpart James Cleverly on Tuesday discussed bilateral relations and the fallout of the Ukraine conflict soon after Rishi Sunak took over as the United Kingdom prime minister.
There was no official readout on the conversation from both sides, and Jaishankar said in a tweet that he received a call from Cleverly and they discussed counter-terrorism, bilateral relations and the Ukraine conflict.
Cleverly said in a tweet that the two ministers “discussed the Russia-Ukraine crisis and that the UK will be challenging Russia’s rhetoric and allegations” at an upcoming meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
The remarks were an apparent reference to the UNSC that is expected to take up Russia’s claims about Ukraine’s plans to use a so-called “dirty bomb”. Officials from the United States, the UK and other Western countries have already dismissed the claims as a “Russian false-flag operation”.
Cleverly was among the British leaders who backed stronger relations with India after former home secretary Suella Braverman’s remarks about a planned bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) triggering more immigration from India didn’t go down well in New Delhi.
“We do want to have an even stronger, and it’s strong already, but an even stronger trading relationship with India,” Cleverly said earlier this month.
{{/usCountry}}“We do want to have an even stronger, and it’s strong already, but an even stronger trading relationship with India,” Cleverly said earlier this month.
{{/usCountry}}Meanwhile, UK high commissioner Alex Ellis said on Tuesday that Sunak had made it clear that the economy will be top priority during his premiership. “India is a big investor in UK, the UK is a big investor in India. We want to double trade by 2030,” he told ANI news agency.
“A free trade agreement is an excellent way of doing that. It’s a long way to get to the FTA, we’ve walked through the foothills, gone up the valley, got to base camp and now we need to do this short and sharp ascent. I think both countries are determined to reach the summit,” Ellis said.
The British envoy acknowledged that it “takes two to tango” and said, “Negotiations [had been] going hard for under a year. It’s a short time for free trade agreements but there’s a prize inside, which is the strengthening of employment and growth in both countries. I think that’s what both prime ministers would want to achieve.”
Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson had set a target to finalise the trade deal by Diwali, which was celebrated on October 24. People familiar with the matter have said the FTA is likely to be concluded next year because of differences in key areas such as the mobility of professionals and students and automobiles.
Ellis also described the election of Britain’s first Hindu prime minister as a “historic moment”.
“It’s a big day for UK. We have a new PM. He’s young. His grandparents came from India, his parents from East Africa. He’s a Hindu. It’s a sign of a different UK compared to the country in which I grew up,” he said.
“UK-India relations have been deepening and growing very fast since we left the European Union. We’ll see what happens while we expect this government to pursue the same course,” he added.