US Secretary Antony Blinken to attend G20 foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his India visit next week would attend the crucial foreign ministers meeting of the G-20 group and that of Quad in addition to participation in the Raisina dialogue followed by bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, officials here said.

India has taken over the Presidency of the G20 on December 1, last year.

The top American diplomat is travelling to New Delhi on a three-day official visit from March 1 to 3.

“Blinken looks forward to going to Delhi as part of India’s G20 presidency year. We look forward to doing everything we can to support India’s work to make its G20 presidency a success. There is no shortage of common challenges, and we want to deepen our partnership with other G-20 countries to address these challenges,” Ramin Toloui, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, told reporters here.

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Donald Lu said the Secretary will be meeting, while in New Delhi, with his counterpart, the Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar.

“They’ll talk about our strategic partner partnership but really focus on how we’re working together in the Asian Quad, in the G20, what we’re doing on defense cooperation and the Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies that is being run out of the White House and the prime minister’s office,” he said.

“On March 3rd, the Secretary will also participate in a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Asian Quad, which is the United States, India, Japan, and Australia,” Lu said, adding that immediately following the Quad ministerial meeting Blinken will participate in a panel at the Raisina Dialogue.

Lu said several crucial matters would be taken up during the Quad meeting.

“And what will be interesting about this I’m not aware that they’ve ever had an hour-long public event where the four foreign ministers have had a chance to talk about the Quad, and to demonstrate how it is getting tangible and concrete things done in the Indo-Pacific,” Lu said.

“I think we’re going to hear about what we’re doing on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief. We’ll hear about what we’re doing to improve security in the Indo-Pacific, in the Maritime Domain Awareness space. We will talk about achievements on vaccine diplomacy, and then you’ll hear about the launch of the Quad fellows programme, and a recent business and investment forum,” he said.

Giving a preview of the trip, Toloui said the purpose of the G20 is to bring together the major economies of the world to tackle common challenges.

“We will be discussing food security, energy security, health security, the climate crisis, development, humanitarian challenges, and other issues that require international coordination, like the proliferation of illicit synthetic drugs,” he said.

Blinken will discuss the range of things that the United States is doing to address these global challenges that includes the USD 13.5 billion that the US committed last year to address emergency food needs, as well as strengthen food systems for the medium term.

“It includes actions like the USD 450 million that the United States has pledged to the pandemic fund, as well as USD 1.3 billion per year the US will invest under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to support health care workers fighting HIV/AIDS, and it will include many other things,” he said.

“It is also an unfortunate reality that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not only itself a threat to sovereignty and territorial integrity of states – Russia’s invasion also makes so many of these critical global challenges, from food insecurity to energy insecurity, worse,” he said.

Responding to a question on India-Russia relationship, Lu hoped India will use its influence with Russia to support an end to this conflict, and as Foreign Minister Jaishankar has said, end to the conflict according to the principles of the UN Charter: territorial integrity and sovereignty.

“We have said before, the Secretary has said India has had a long and complicated history with Russia going back to the Cold War days, that is a deep and sustained relationship over many decades,” Lu said.