US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is likely to travel to India in March and the details of his visit are being worked out, a report has said.
The US State Department is eyeing the first week of March for Blinken’s visit to New Delhi, which would be a run-up to President Joe Biden’s meeting with Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) leaders, ANI reported quoting an official.
“Secretary Blinken will be meeting his Indian counterpart and other officials to lay the groundwork for the upcoming Quad leaders’ summit in May 2023,” the report said quoting source.
This will be the third annual summit of Quad members India, Australia, Japan and the US. The last summit was held in Tokyo in May 2022.
“The summit is expected to be held in Sydney and for now, most likely all four leaders will be present in person for the summit. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will travel to Sydney to meet Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to further cement the Quad cooperation,” another person familiar with the developments told ANI.
During his India visit, Blinken will also attend the Raisina Dialogue, a multilateral conference held in New Delhi on March 2-4.
The US Secretary is likely to address the Raisina dialogue, an annual conference held on geopolitics and geo-economics that the Observer Research Foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs of India hosts.
Earlier in November, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the ASEAN-India summit in Cambodia. The two counterparts discussed the conflict in Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific region and Indo-US bilateral ties.
Blinken will also travel to China in February for continued discussions related to one of America’s most complicated and consequential relationships.
He is currently on a visit to Israel and the West Bank where tensions have soared over differences between the administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government has grown significantly more complicated over the past four days with a spate of deadly incidents.
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