Jaishankar, Rajnath to talk Indo-Pacific, bilateral & global issues with US counterparts Blinken and Austin

Blinken and Austin will also call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after holding the 2+2 dialogue, to be joined by Jaishankar and Singh.

New Delhi: India and the United States will hold the 2+2 dialogue in New Delhi next week with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh hosting their counterparts Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin.

The fifth India-US 2+2 dialogue on November 10 may set the stage for President Joe Biden’s visit to New Delhi early next year if he accepts the invitation Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended to him to be the chief guest at the Republic Day ceremony on Kartavya Path in the national capital.

The 2+2 dialogue will see Jaishankar, Singh, Blinken and Austin exchanging views on “bilateral and global concerns as well as the developments in the Indo-Pacific region”, Mathew Miller, the spokesperson of the US State Department, told journalists in Washington DC. Austin and Singh will discuss expanding defence industrial cooperation, enhancing interoperability, and advancing innovation through the India-US Defence Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X), according to a statement issued by the Department of Defence of the American Government.

Blinken and Austin will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after holding the 2+2 dialogue, joined by Jaishankar and Singh.

The 2+2 dialogue will also offer both New Delhi and Washington DC an opportunity to review the status of the implementation of several initiatives launched when Biden hosted Modi at the White Houze on June 22 and 23.

 If Biden attends the Republic Day ceremony on January 26, New Delhi may also invite the prime ministers of Australia and Japan, Anthony Albanese and Fumio Kishida, and host a summit of the Quad on January 27.

 The Quad is a four-nation coalition India forged with the US, Australia and Japan to counter China’s bid to expand its geopolitical and geoeconomic influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

 If Biden accepts Modi’s invitation to attend the Republic Day ceremony on the Kartavya Path in New Delhi as the chief guest, he would be the second US president to do so.

 Barack Obama was the chief guest at the 2015 Republic Day ceremony in New Delhi.