As the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is slated to arrive in New Delhi to attend a battery of key conferences including the G20 meet, the Biden administration on Monday termed India as a global strategic partner and characterized the relationship as wide, broad, and deep, according to recent reports. Blinken is also scheduled to hold a bilateral talk with India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and will attend a Quad ministerial meeting.
“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,” said Ned Price, a State Department spokesperson, during his daily press conference on Monday.
“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 stich together some of the partnerships in which India has been a key player,” he stated.
Blinken, in his three-day trip to India, is expected to address various topics including China and Russia.
“You’ve heard very firmly from Prime Minister Modi the belief on the part of the Indian government that this is not the era of war. There are countries around the world, notably Russia, that are challenging the rules-based order, the principles of the UN Charter, the principles of International law, and the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We’ll continue to discuss these issues with our Indian partners. I have no doubt that they’ll be on the agenda for and around the G20,” Price said.