Moving on from the fiasco in Afghanistan, the United States is renewing its focus on working with India, Japan and Australia to contain China in the Indo-Pacific and planning to host the first in-person summit of the ‘Quad’.
The senior diplomats of India and the United States on Thursday discussed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed visit to Washington – not only to take part in the Quad Summit but also to hold his first in-person meeting with President Joe Biden. New Delhi is planning the Prime Minister’s visit to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly later this month and his itinerary may be extended to include a tour to Washington for a bilateral meeting with the US President and the Quad Summit.
New Delhi will take into account the Covid-19 situation both in the US and India to take a final call on Modi’s visit to New York and Washington. If he does travel to the US, it will be his second foreign visit after the pandemic swept the world in March-April 2020 and forced the world leaders to suspend tours and switch to virtual meetings. He had last visited Bangladesh in March this year.
Biden has been planning to host the first in-person summit of the Quad – with Modi, Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan. The initiative gained new momentum of late with the US trying to repair the dent that its global standing suffered over the recent fiasco in Afghanistan, where the Taliban took advantage of the withdrawal of the foreign troops and took over Kabul on August 15 after occupying many provincial capitals in a swift blitz across the war-torn country.
Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla and his counterpart in the US Department of State, Wendy Sherman, had a meeting in Washington DC on Thursday. They earlier had informal talks during a dinner hosted by New Delhi’s envoy to Washington DC, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, at the Embassy of India in the US capital. The officials of the US National Security Council and the office of Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, were present during the informal interaction, which the Foreign Secretary termed as “a great start to a comprehensive engagement with a key partner”.
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Shringla and Sherman exchanged views on the situation in Afghanistan. New Delhi has been concerned over the possibility of the change of regime in Afghanistan which is being exploited by Pakistan and its “iron-brother” China to gain a strategic edge against India.
Shringla and Sherman discussed ways for “advancing the India-US Strategic Partnership across sectors including healthcare, defence and security, trade and investment, science and technology, climate change, clean energy and people-to-people ties,” the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said.
“They also reviewed developments in Afghanistan, Indo-Pacific region, Covid-19 pandemic and discussed cooperation in UN and other regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest.”
The Foreign Secretary also called on the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and discussed the bilateral relations and the situation in Afghanistan.
The senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Defence also had a meeting with their counterparts in the US Department of State and Department of Defence – in order to set the stage for the 2+2 dialogue.
The officials discussed the situation in Afghanistan. They exchanged assessments about the “recent developments in South Asia, the Indo-Pacific region and Western Indian Ocean”. They reaffirmed their commitment to the shared vision for “peace, stability and prosperity and for a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region”. They also considered the possibility of enhancing collaboration in areas of counterterrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well as maritime security, according to a press release issued by the MEA in New Delhi.
The ‘Quad’ is a coalition forged by India, Japan, Australia and the US in 2007 and revived in 2017 – in order to create a bulwark of democratic nations to counter China’s expansionist move and hegemonic aspirations in the Indo-Pacific region. Modi, Biden, Suga and Morrison had held the first-ever summit of the ‘Quad’ through video calls on March 12, elevating the four-nation coalition to the level of the leaders.