The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken and his colleague, Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, will be in New Delhi in February or March next year for the next round of dialogue with their counterparts: external affairs minister S. Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh.
The decision to have the meeting early next year was taken at the “intersessional” 2+2 meeting earlier this month. Officials are talking about the decision to have a “spring meeting.” While the 2+2 is at the ministerial level, the intersessional meeting, roughly halfway between the big meetings is at the level of joint/additional secretaries from the Indian side and assistant secretaries of the American government.
One of the issues that could be on the agenda is BECA, or the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation. While the basic agreement has been signed, the different annexures have to be agreed upon by the two sides. These are “technical” issues and after the agreements are made, they will be presented to the four leaders. The international and regional situations will be under discussion. This means the war in the Ukraine, China, Taiwan and terrorism, particularly relating to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
India has the 2+2 system with only a handful of countries. They, apart from the United States, include the other Quad countries–Japan and Australia– and Russia. A 2+2 meeting with the Japanese took place in Tokyo while the intersessional meeting was going on here.
0 Comments