Mathai to meet newly appointed US Secretary of State Kerry

Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai will meet newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry and discuss Indo-US cooperation in key strategic areas and the regional situation.

Mathai, who arrived here on a three-day US trip - his first of the Obama Administration's second term -, would also hold a series of meetings with top American officials on a range of bilateral and regional issues.
Prominent among them include Deputy Secretary of State William Burns; Under Secretary of State for Energy, Economic Growth and the Environment Robert Hormats.

Veteran Senator Kerry, who favours strong ties with India, was sworn in as the US Secretary of State early this month, replacing Hillary Clinton as America's top diplomat.

Mathai's meeting with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman would involve regional consultations. He is scheduled to meet Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman and Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

He would kick off his day's engagement at the Carnegie Endowment 21 on the topic "A 21st Century India-United States partnership for peace, prosperity and progress". His three-day Washington visit would also lay the ground work for the next round of Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi in the summer.

Early this month Deputy Defense Secretary Carter met National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon in Germany on the sidelines of the 49th Munich Security Conference.

"The two had a positive discussion concerning issues of mutual interest," Major Catherine Wilkinson told PTI after the Carter-Menon meeting. "The Indians don't want to just buy weapons systems from us, they want to co-develop and co-produce systems of mutual value that we can jointly export. We support that aspiration in India. That's the way we want to do things, too," Carter told American Forces Press Service.