With Obama in India, China Praises Pakistan as 'Irreplaceable Friend'

New Delhi: Calling Pakistan an "irreplaceable all-weather friend", China today pledged full support to it amid the high-profile visit of US President Barack Obama to India. The President and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a joint statement, rebuked China for trying to use force and threats to establish control over the South China Sea.

China's comments about Islamabad came as Pakistani Army Chief General Raheel Sharif met with top Chinese leaders in Beijing.

"Pakistan is China's irreplaceable all-weather friend and both countries (are) part of (a) community of shared destiny," Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly said, according to a spokesman for the Pakistani army. <div id='ndtvrelcontent'></div>
The army chief's visit to China coincided with President Obama's second trip to India, where he served as Chief Guest for Republic Day celebrations.

Pakistan is under pressure from both India and the US to stop sheltering terrorists; both countries have called for a strict ban on terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its sister agency, Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which is a self-declared charity headed by Hafiz Saeed, the man who India holds responsible for the siege of Mumbai in 2008 in which 166 people were killed.

Mr Obama's arrival in New Delhi was treated as breaking news on the national state-run television channel which showed a live feed of him being received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the airport with questions on how it is going to impact China and whether it was part of the US strategy to check Beijing's influence in the region.

State-run Xinhua news agency in a commentary described the summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Obama as "a superficial rapprochement" and said, "three days are surely not enough for Obama and Modi to become true friends, given their hard differences on issues like climate change, agricultural disputes and nuclear energy cooperation."

The New York Times reported that in the talks with the Prime Minister, "Obama and his aides discovered to their surprise that Modi's assessment of China's rise and its impact on the greater strategic situation in East Asia was closely aligned with their own. Just as they did, Modi seemed increasingly uneasy about China's efforts to extend its influence around the region and interested in a united approach to counter them. "