External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Friday confirmed that he spoke to Jake Sullivan and Blinked on the Canada row — the ongoing diplomatic crisis between India and Canada following.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s public allegation that India had a role in the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. “Yes I did,” Jaishankar said replying to a question. “They obviously shared the US views and the assessment of the whole situation. I explained to them, at some length, the summary of the concerns which I had. Hopefully, we both came out of those meetings better and forward,” Jaishankar said.
“The Canadian PM made some allegations initially privately, and then publicly. And, our, response to him, both in private and public, were that what he was alleging was not consistent with our policy. And that if he had, if his government had anything relevant and specific they would like us to look into, we were open to looking at it. Now, that’s where that conversation is at this point of time…” Jaishankar said.
But to understand that conversation, you have to also understand that this has been an issue of great friction for many years with Canada, in fact going back to the 1980s. Then it became dormant. But in the last few years, it has come back very much into play, because of what we consider to be a very permissive Canadian attitude towards terrorists, extremist people who openly advocate violence. And they have been given operating space in Canada because of the compulsions of Canadian politics…”