‘Can’t confirm that’: WH on report that US provided intelligence to Indian military on Chinese ‘incursion’

PTI, Mar 21, 2023, 8:43 AM IST

The White House on Monday refused to confirm a news report that the United States provided crucial intelligence to the Indian military last year that helped it successfully tackle the Chinese ”incursions”.

”No, I can’t confirm that,” John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for Strategic Communications at the White House told reporters at a daily news conference here when asked about the news report.

In an exclusive news report, the US News said that India was able to repel a Chinese military incursion in border territory in the high Himalayas late last year due to unprecedented intelligence-sharing with the US military, an act that caught China’s People’s Liberation Army off-guard, enraged Beijing; and appears to have forced the Chinese Communist Party to reconsider its approach to land grabs along its borders.

”The US government for the first time provided real-time details to its Indian counterparts of the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion, says a source familiar with a previously unreported U.S. intelligence review of the encounter into the Arunachal Pradesh region,” the daily reported.

”The information included actionable satellite imagery and was more detailed and delivered more quickly than anything the U.S. had previously shared with the Indian military,” it said.

”They were waiting. And that’s because the U.S. had given India everything to be fully prepared for this. It demonstrates a test case of the success of how the two militaries are now cooperating and sharing intelligence,” an unnamed source was quoted as saying by the daily.