Need to engage with India on all Indo-Pacific challenges: Dutch ambassador

By Trend

European nations need to remain engaged with India to tackle critical challenges in the Indo-Pacific, ranging from climate change to border disputes, Dutch ambassador Marten van den Berg has said.

The world’s concentration on the conflict in Ukraine is understandable, given the humanitarian tragedy and the unexpected full-scale war, but this doesn’t mean the problems and challenges in the Indo-Pacific will go away, he said in an interview.

The Indo-Pacific, in terms of population and economic growth, is the most important region in the world, but there are numerous challenges, Van den Berg said. “I think we have security challenges in the Indo-Pacific,” he added.

Worries about challenges in the Indo-Pacific have increased after the Ukraine crisis because the underlying principles are global concerns, he said. “How do we secure a safe environment, and if there are tensions, how do we have dialogue and diplomacy and a dispute settlement mechanism to deal with it, to address it and not go into war or conflict,” he said.

“We never expected a full-scale war on the European continent. We are extremely concerned about what is happening [in terms of] the humanitarian tragedy and losses, which are horrible,” Van den Berg said, adding the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) were unified in their response.