India's erstwhile foreign secretary and former Ambassador to the United States, Lalit Mansingh, who is now regularly invited by Washington DC think-tanks and various South Asia programmes in American universities and colleges, has ruled out the possibility of India pursuing a balance of power vis-a-vis China.


Mansingh, while addressing a conference on India as a Global Power organised by George Washington University's Sigur Center for Asian Studies and DC think-tank the Centre for a New American Security, said India's answer to China's "string of pearls" in Asia, particularly South Asia, was its own "necklace of diamonds".