Talks with PM Modi to review over two dozen areas of tech collaboration, food and fuel security due to Ukraine conflict
New Delhi: US President Joe Biden left for India at around 4 am IST on Friday. Sept 8, and his first engagement in India will be bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the PMO instead of the usual Hyderabad House, to be followed by a working dinner, a special report by Sandeep Dikshit in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
Ahead of the meeting that will again assess the extent of US-India cooperation possible in the strategic domain, both sides have given positive signals. They have also made known their positions towards China. This comes at a time when the US and Australia have made overtures towards Beijing, informed sources said.
Biden arrives after his administration ensured that the US Congress gave the go-ahead for licensed manufacture and tech transfer of GE jet engines in India which fits in with the Indian aim of achieving advanced manufacturing capability across a wide range of areas.
India, on the other hand, has approved the process for the purchase of the highly-advanced MQ-9B Reaper by General Atomics with the contract to be signed next
At the G 20 Summit, Biden will have the field to himself to woo the Global South after his geostrategic rivals, the Russian and Chinese presidents, have decided not to attend the Delhi meet.
The US President is expected to announce US steadfastness to relieve the debt burden on poor countries and endorse a futuristic plan of a $200 billion fund as corpus for the purpose.
He is also expected to strongly endorse a proposed global biofuels alliance.
On the regional level, talks are at an advanced stage on announcing a joint railway network through the Arab world with India’s involvement and is the result of i2U2 (India, Israel, the UAE and the US) quadrilateral.
With the intermeshing of several ports including those in the subcontinent, Dubai, Israel and Greece, it would be a faster route for products to and from Europe as well as undercut Chinese endeavours in this regard.
After New Delhi President Biden’s next syop will be Vietnam, There the bilateral talks will assess the limits of their relationship against the backdrop of the China factor.
After Richard Nixon’s 1969 visit to the US naval base Cam Ranh Bay, in there was a pause on US Presidential visits for over two decades after the US military quit Vietnam in 1975. Bill Clinton had visited Vietnam in 2000 and since then all successive US Presidents — George Bush Jr, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — have been to Vietnam.
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