Modi to have 'farewell' meeting with Biden in Delaware, attend Quad summit

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to have a ‘farewell meeting’ with President Joe Biden in the home city of the 81-year-old leader of the United States on September 21.

Modi will fly to Wilmington in Delaware to meet Biden just about six weeks before the US will vote to elect its next president. He and Biden will also join Japanese and Australian prime ministers, Fumio Kishida and Anthony Albanese, for a summit of the Quad – a four-nation coalition forged to counter the hegemonic aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region, sources said.

This may be the last in-person meeting between Modi and Biden before he and First Lady Jill Biden leave the White House in Washington DC, and his successor is sworn in as the next US president on January 20 next year.

Biden hosted Modi in the White House on June 21 and 22 last year during the prime minister’s landmark visit to the US. The prime minister hosted the US president on September 9 and 10 when he came to attend the G20 summit in New Delhi.

The bilateral relations between New Delhi and Washington DC, however, came under stress after the US prosecutors on November 29, 2023, alleged that Nikhil Gupta, a citizen of India incarcerated in the Czech Republic, had been an associate of an official of an agency of the Government of India and the official had engaged him to hire a hitman to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel of the secessionist organization Sikhs for Justice.

The allegation by Washington DC against New Delhi followed a similar claim by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in Ottawa about the role of India in the June 18, 2023, killing of another Khalistani Sikh extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar at the parking lot of a gurdwara at Surrey in the British Columbia province of Canada.

Though New Delhi dismissed the allegation, the Biden Administration has been nudging the Government of India to cooperate in the probe launched by the agencies of the Government of Canada in connection with the murder. It was also revealed that the US had provided intelligence inputs to help Canada accuse India of the killing of Nijjar.

Gupta was extradited from the Czech Republic to the US on June 15 this year.

Modi was expected to host Kishida, Albanese, and Biden for the fourth in-person summit of the Quad in New Delhi. But it was later decided that the summit would take place on the sideline of the UNGA in New York. However, Biden, who played a key role in elevating the summit of the four-nation coalition to the level of the leaders in 2021, was keen to host Modi, Kishida, and Albanese for one more conclave before the end of his term as the US president. The four nations then decided to shift the venue from New York to Wilmington.

The prime minister will address the Indian Americans at an event titled “Modi and US Progress Together” at the Nassau Coliseum in New York’s Long Island on September 22. He will also take part in the “Summit of the Future” at the United Nations on September 22 and 23. He, however, may not address the United Nations General Assembly. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will address the UNGA on behalf of the Government of India on September 28.