India and the United States are expected to hold the inaugural edition of the simultaneous meetings of their defence and external affairs ministers \u2014 called two<\/p>\n
-by-two \u2014 here in Washington DC in April, according to officials involved in its planning and organisation.<\/p>\n
Though the agenda for the meetings was still under construction \u2014 \u201cnot pinned down yet\u201d, as an official said in Washington \u2014 the broad focus will be, as<\/p>\n
described in the original White House announcement last August \u201cto enhance peace and stability across the Indo-Pacific region\u201d, a term used increasingly for<\/p>\n
China-related threats in the area.<\/p>\n
Also, the announcement issued after a phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Tump on the eve of the Indian Independence<\/p>\n
Day had said \u201cestablishing a new 2-by-2 ministerial dialogue \u2026 will elevate their (the two countries\u2019) strategic consultations\u201d.<\/p>\n
The inaugural edition of the ministerial dialogue was expected earlier to take place soon after the announcement, and probably in New Delhi, but did not<\/p>\n
because of scheduling issues, officials from both countries had said then.<\/p>\n
Secretary of defense James Mattis, one of the two members of the 2-by-2 dialogue, went to India late September and met his newly appointed counterpart<\/p>\n
defense minister Nirmala Sitharaman; and called on the prime minister and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.<\/p>\n
Secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who couldn\u2019t join Mattis, followed a month later in October, to meet his counterpart external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj \u2014<\/p>\n
their second, they had their first meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly meetings in New York in September. He also met Modi and Doval.<\/p>\n
These meetings might have served the purpose of a 2-by-2 ministerial dialogue but did not strictly, when the four would meet together with their respective<\/p>\n
delegations.<\/p>\n
Apart from the Indo-Pacific region, fefense minister Sitharaman will, it is expected, discuss with her counterpart Mattis ongoing, and growing, defense ties<\/p>\n
including joint military exercises and defense trade, which would cover co-development and co-production of defense equipment.<\/p>\n
On foreign policy, Swaraj and Tillerson (if he lasts that long, till April), are strongly expected to discuss China, which is a country of mutual concern as reflected<\/p>\n
in the last few joint statements coming out of summit-level meetings between the two countries, and terrorism, also called Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India and the United States are expected to hold the inaugural edition of the simultaneous meetings of their defence and external affairs ministers \u2014 called two -by-two \u2014 here in Washington DC in April, according to officials involved in its planning and organisation. Though the agenda for the meetings was still under construction \u2014 \u201cnot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19954,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19952\/revisions\/19954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}