WORLD NEWS | Blinken in Delhi to attend G20 foreign ministers, quad meeting, Raisina dialogue: official

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 (PTI) — During his visit to India next week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will attend a key G20 and G4 meeting of foreign ministers and will also attend the Raisina Dialogue, followed by bilateral talks with India, officials here said , corresponding Foreign Minister S Jaishankar.

India took over the G20 presidency on December 1 last year.

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The top US diplomat is on a three-day official visit to New Delhi from March 1-3.

“Blinken is looking forward to traveling to Delhi as part of India’s year of G20 presidency. We look forward to doing all we can to support India’s successful G20 presidency. There are no shortage of common challenges and we look forward to deepening our partnerships with other G20 countries to address These challenges,” Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Commercial Affairs Ramin Toloui told reporters here.

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Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lew said the secretary will meet Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar in New Delhi.

“They’ll talk about our strategic partnerships, but the real focus is on how we work together in the Asian quartet, the G20, what we’re doing on defense cooperation, and the critical and emerging technology initiatives that are running away from the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office ,”He said.

“On March 3, the secretary of state will also participate in a meeting of the Asian quadrilateral foreign ministers consisting of the United States, India, Japan and Australia,” Lu said, adding that immediately following the quadrilateral ministerial meeting, Blinken will participate in a meeting at the Raisina Dialogue. in the group.

Lu said the four-party meeting will discuss several key issues.

“Interestingly, I don’t know they’ve ever had an hour-long public event where four foreign ministers had the opportunity to talk about the Quartet and show how it’s become tangible and concrete what it’s doing in the Indo-Pacific region, “Lu said.

“I think we’ll hear what we’re doing in terms of humanitarian aid and disaster relief. We’ll hear in the area of ​​maritime domain awareness what we’re doing to improve security in the Indo-Pacific. We’ll talk about the achievements of vaccine diplomacy, and then you Will hear about the launch of the Quartet Fellows program and the recent business and investment forum,” he said.

Toroy introduced the situation of this trip. He said that the purpose of the G20 is to bring together the world’s major economies to tackle common challenges.

“We will discuss food security, energy security, health security, climate crisis, development, humanitarian challenges and other issues that require international coordination, such as the proliferation of illicit synthetic drugs,” he said.

Blinken will discuss a range of things the U.S. is doing to address these global challenges, including the $13.5 billion the U.S. pledged last year to address emergency food needs and strengthen food systems over the medium term.

“That includes the $450 million that the U.S. is committing to the Pandemic Fund, and the $1.3 billion that the U.S. will spend annually under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to support health care workers fighting HIV/AIDS, which will include many other things,” He said.

“It is also unfortunate that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not only a threat to national sovereignty and territorial integrity in itself – Russia’s invasion has also made many of these major global challenges worse, from food insecurity to energy insecurity,” he said .

In answering a question on India-Russia relations, Lu hoped that India would use its influence with Russia to support ending the conflict, as Foreign Minister Jaishankar said, in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter: Territorial Integrity and Sovereignty.

“As we have said before, the Secretary of State has said that India has a long and complex history with Russia going back to the Cold War, a deep and enduring relationship that spans decades,” Lu said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)