Washington, April 5: The White House has reiterated that "accelerating or increasing" imports of Russian energy and other commodities is not in India's interest and offered to work with New Delhi to help India reduce its reliance on imports from Moscow.
Talking about the visit of top Indian-American US advisor Daleep Singh to New Delhi last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki at her daily news conference on Monday said that the former explained both the mechanisms of the American sanctions and reiterated that any country or entity should be abiding by those.
Psaki, on the other hand, stated that reporting energy payments by India are not sanctioned and New Delhi's imports of Russian energy account for only one to two percent of its total energy imports.
The US Deputy National Security Adviser, who played a vital role in designing American sanctions against Russia, visited New Delhi last week amid growing discontent among Western powers at India's failure to denounce Russia's attack on Ukraine.
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He also warned that countries actively attempting to "circumvent or backfill" American sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine would face consequences, and said he did not want to see a "rapid" increase in India's imports of energy and other commodities from Russia.
On Monday, Psaki had said, "certainly our expectation and our public and private message is - will continue to be that every country should abide by the sanctions that we have announced and that we are implementing around the world."
She further added that "energy payments are not sanctioned; that's a decision made by each individual country. And we've been very clear that each country is going to make their own choices, even as we have made the decision and other countries have decided to ban energy imports."
"What Daleep did make clear to his counterparts during this visit was that we don't believe it's in India's interest to accelerate or increase imports of Russian energy and other commodities," Psaki continued.
"Right now, just to give everybody the full scope of it, India's imports of Russian energy represent only 1 to 2% of their total energy imports," she said.
Russia accounts for less than 1% of India's total oil imports. However, sanctions against Russia for its offensive against Ukraine have given way to talk of a rupee trade for the oil and gas purchases.
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-PTC News