Bengaluru: Attacking China for its aggressive moves against its neighbours, including "instigating" a deadly confrontation with India in eastern Ladakh, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that Beijing cannot threaten countries and bully them in the Himalayas.

Speaking at a news conference in London on Tuesday, Pompeo said China was one of the important parts of his discussions with his British counterpart Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

“You can't go make claims for maritime regions that you have no lawful claim to. You can't threaten countries and bully them in the Himalayas. You can't engage in cover-ups and co-opt international institutions like the World Health Organisation,” Pompeo said.

 

Pompeo's comment on Chinese bullying of its Himalayan neighbours came in response to a question if the US would like the UK to do more to confront China.

“I don't think about it that way; we don't think about it that way. We think that the entire world needs to work together to ensure that every country, including China, behaves in the international system in ways that are appropriate and consistent with the international order,” he said.

“We talked about how we've seen Hong Kong's freedoms crushed. We've watched the CCP bully its neighbours, militarise features in the South China Sea, and instigate a deadly confrontation with India,” Pompeo said.

Earlier, Pompeo, responding to a question on the aggressive Chinese behaviour on the Sino-India border and the South China Sea during an interview with Fox News, had said that the threat posed by China is real.

"The Chinese Communist Party has been on this effort, on this march, for an awfully long time. They'll certainly use a tactical situation on the ground to their advantage. But each of the problems that you identified there are threats that they have been making for an awfully long time," he said.