Winston Peters says New Zealand-India relationship entering ‘new phase’

Thursday, 14 March 2024

Foreign Minister Winston Peters says the New Zealand-India relationship looks to be entering a “new phase” after “serious dialogue” in New Delhi about shared security challenges.

Peters had his final meetings in the Indian capital overnight on Thursday as part of a four-day trip aimed at forging better ties with the world’s most populous country.

Visiting both the state of Gujurat and New Delhi, he has met with India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, vice presdient Jagdeep Dhankhar, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national security advisor, Ajit Doval.

Peters also attended a Women’s Premier League match in which two White Ferns players, Sophie Devine and Amelia Kerr, were playing, and visited the recently opened New Parliament House, in which around 20,000kg of New Zealand wool was used to make the carpet.

'This is about establishing relationships of trust, not just in Delhi, but around India, and so we are totally broadening our scope and [making] new connections,“ Peters told The Post.

The National-coalition Government believes New Zealand’s relationship with India drifted under a Labour Government during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it has promised to renew efforts to improve trade ties ‒ including pursuing a free trade agreement (FTA), however unlikely with the highly-protectionist agricultural economy.

On Thursday, Peters spoke of wanting to pursue a deepening of the relationship with India beyond just trade. He said Jaishankar spoke of the relations between the two countries entering a “new phase”, and he agreed.

“There are opportunities we begin to see everywhere, where if we do much more work on it, I think we can make some serious rapid progress.

“I'm not talking about an FTA. Personally, I'm talking about a new phase … in which we work with a finer focus on detail as to trade or aspects of trade, we can make some progress on as fast as possible.”

Peters said there would be efforts aimed at “sharpening up” the criteria for New Zealand accepting Indian students, as well as air connectivity ‒ a direct flight between the two countries is hoped to come about in the coming years ‒ and collaboration on agri-tech.

Conversations with officials in India also canvassed shared “strategic perspectives” and “security challenges”. As with New Zealand and many countries in the Asia-Pacific, a growing India has concerns about an increasingly assertive China, with which it shares a contested border.

'If you look at the job developing circumstances in the Indo-Pacific and indeed worldwide, there are some troubling concerns that we talked about, and how we might best work together as countries that are democracies that believe in the rule of law, to make progress as quickly as possible, with like-minded countries,“ Peters said.

'It's rather acutely obvious that there are tensions in parts of the world that are not in either of our country's interests, or the interest of so many other people around the world.“

There were also discussions about how New Zealand might learn from India about “what needs to be done” on defence and security. Peters said conversations about the second pillar of the Aukus agreement ‒ a cutting-edge defence technology agreement between Australia, the United States, and United Kingdom, that the Government hopes to join.

Aukus may well “mesh” with the Quad, a security partnership between Australia, India, Japan and the United States, Peters said.

'It's very hard to quantify or elaborate with detail this early stage, but they showed interest in that.“

Peters said both Jaishankar and India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, would visit New Zealand in the coming year, depending on the outcome of India’s elections in the coming months.