India wants friendly ties, but on its own terms: BJP MP

India wants harmonious relations with all countries, including Pakistan, but on its own terms, BJP's Rajya Sabha member Vinay Sahasrabuddhe said on Thursday.

Participating in a short-duration discussion in the upper house over India's foreign policy and strategic engagement with partners, Sahasrabuddhe said India's foreign policy roadmap is "very clear".

He also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying one of notable achievement of his foreign engagements is changing the world's perception about India.

Modi has "redoubled investment in protecting India's interests in the Indian Ocean region," the Bharatiya Janata Party leader said.

"His remarkable outreach to the US despite past personal irritants, his intensification of emerging partnership with Japan, his success in preserving balanced ties with both China and Russia, and his nurturing of important partners in western Europe, central and Southeast Asia and in the Persian Gulf, where he demonstrated a geo-political adroitness unusual in Indian foreign policy -- all this has been complimented by an unanticipated investment in building personal ties with (US) President Donald Trump, (Israel) Prime Ministers (Benjamin) Netanyahu, (Japan's) Shinzo Abe and (Bangladesh's) Sheikh Hasina," the BJP leader said.

He said from Canada to Fiji, wherever Modi went, he engaged with the Indian diaspora in a very "systematic manner".

"Harnessing the strength of the Indian diaspora is something very innovative and new to Indian foreign policy," Sahasrabuddhe said, adding that ridiculing the Prime Minister's foreign trips was akin to "trivialising the serious matter" at hand.

--IANS

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