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Donald Lu. File.
| Photo Credit: Mohammed Yousuf
U.S. President Joe Biden is looking forward to travelling to India in September, his administration’s point person for South and Central Asia has said, observing that 2024 is going to be a “big year” for the India-U.S. relationship.
India’s leadership in the G-20 further broadens its capacity to stand as a force for good in the world, the official said.
“This is gonna be a big year. Of course, India is hosting the G-20. This year, the United States is hosting APEC. Japan is hosting the G7. We have lots of our QUAD members who are taking on leadership roles. And it provides opportunities for all of us to bring our countries closer together,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu, told PTI in an interview on Thursday.
“I know our President is looking forward to travelling to India in September. That will be his first trip to India as part of the G-20 Leaders Summit. We’re really excited about what’s to come in the next few months,” he said.
“We’re only a little over three months into this new year. And we’ve had a number of really exciting things that happened,” he said.
This includes the visit of Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to India. The India-US Forum in Delhi was attended by several senior administration officials.
“In March Dr Jaishankar hosted his QUAD counterparts for a ministerial meeting and extraordinary public events at the Raisina Dialogue with all four foreign ministers together. It was the first such public discussion with QUAD foreign ministers and really drove home how our four countries are coming together to support the people of the Indo-Pacific,” he said.
“And then lastly, this month, the arrival of our new Ambassador Eric Garcetti. He has already received a really warm welcome from our Indian and American staff at the US Embassy. Once he presents his credentials, he is looking forward to meeting with the rest of India and I think India will find that he is young, he is enthusiastic, and he’s eager to bring our relations to new heights,” Mr. Lu said.
“We are really thankful for the tremendous work India has done by hosting the G-20 Foreign Ministerial meeting last month, and we look forward to actively participating in the many future G-20 meetings coming up this year, including the New Delhi Leaders Summit in September,” he said.
At the Foreign Ministers’ meeting, India created an agenda that allowed them to discuss some of the world’s most pressing challenges and deliberate to find concrete solutions.
“We have seen how the G-20 brings together countries for collective action. This meeting in March was no exception. As India has already shown during the first few meetings of its presidency, the G-20 is a powerful forum where the world’s leading economies can come together to respond to global challenges: food security, health, energy insecurity, climate change and unsustainable debt,” he said.
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