As United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has left for New Delhi to attend a number of significant conferences, including the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, the Biden administration declared that India is a global strategic partner of the US and that the two countries have a wide, broad, and deep relationship.
In addition, Blinken will speak with S Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs, during a Quad cabinet gathering.
“India is a global strategic partner of ours. We have a wide, broad, deep relationship with India. There will be a lot on the agenda in the bilateral relationship and in the multilateral engagements he takes part in on the margins of the G20,” Ned Price, State Department Spokesperson, told reporters at his daily news conference on Monday, as per PTI.
“We share a vision with India of a free and open Indo-Pacific, and India is a key partner of ours bilaterally, in the context of the Quad as well as other international groupings, even as we’ve attempted to stitch together some of the partnerships in which India has been a key player,” he said.
Quad is comprised of Japan, India, Australia and the United States. The four countries had in 2017 given shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the “Quad” or the Quadrilateral coalition to counter China’s aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region.
China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years.
Beijing claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea. But Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counterclaims. In the East China Sea, China has territorial disputes with Japan.
“We’ve spoken quite a bit recently of I2U2, a new partnership that involves India, it involves the UAE, it involves the United States as well. So, there are a number of elements on the agenda, and you’ll have an opportunity to hear from the Secretary as he travels there,” Price was quoted as saying.
After his visit to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Blinken is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi for a three-day India trip. During his bilateral meetings, both Russia and China are expected to figure in talks.
