EAM Jaishankar meets US NSA in last official engagement with Biden administration

Jake Sullivan began a two-day visit to India on Sunday, his final trip to the Indo-Pacific region as the US NSA.

Updated on: Jan 6, 2025, 12:10:15 IST

By Rezaul H Laskar

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External affairs minister S Jaishankar met US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Monday to discuss ways to deepen bilateral cooperation in a range of areas, including critical technologies and maritime security.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in New Delhi on Monday. (Photo from X)

Sullivan began a two-day visit to India on Sunday, his final trip to the Indo-Pacific region as the US NSA before the inauguration of the Donald Trump administration later this month. Sullivan and his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval are set to conduct a review of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET).

“Continued our ongoing discussions on deepening bilateral, regional and global cooperation. Valued the openness of our conversations in the last four years,” Jaishankar said in a post on X after meeting Sullivan.

Jaishankar also appreciated Sullivan’s “personal contribution to forging a closer and stronger India-US partnership”.

Over the past two years, Doval and Sullivan have led the iCET, which has seen the two sides collaborating closely on sensitive and critical technologies, including semiconductors and military hardware.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby last week said that Sullivan would travel to New Delhi for a “capstone meeting” with Doval that would “span a range of issues across the breadth of our partnership with India, from space, defence, strategic technology cooperation, all the way also to shared security priorities in the Indo-Pacific and beyond”.

Sullivan will also meet other Indian leaders and visit the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi on Monday to deliver a speech outlining the significant steps that the US and India have taken to strengthen their innovation alliance under the iCET.

Jaishankar had met Sullivan and Mike Waltz, who has been nominated by Trump for the post of NSA, during a recent visit to the US. Sullivan’s visit is also expected to be the last high-level engagement between the Indian side and the outgoing Joe Biden administration.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rezaul H Laskar
Rezaul Hasan Laskar is Foreign Editor with the Hindustan Times, which he joined in 2015. He began as a journalist in his hometown of Shillong in northeast India and has worked in newspapers and wire services over the years. He moved to New Delhi in 1997 and initially focused on defence, national security, Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast, while also working of foreign policy and international relations. He has been part of the media delegation accompanying PMs on foreign visits and has reported from destinations ranging from Tibet to Ukraine. Between 2007 and 2013, he was the Press Trust of India correspondent in Pakistan, one of only two Indian journalists allowed to report from the country. He extensively covered Pakistan’s domestic politics and the life of the common people, as well as the fallout of the 2008 Mumbai attacks on India-Pakistan relations and the subsequent trial in Pakistan of the suspects involved in the attack. As part of his reportage in Pakistan, he travelled the breadth of the country, from the Swat Valley to Balochistan. Reza’s first gig in journalism was writing a weekly music column, and music – especially classic rock – remains a keen interest. He is also a movie buff and a keen photographer.Read More

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