Foreign secy S Jaishankar to visit US before PM Modi to firm up agenda

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar is expected to lead the advance party to Washington early next week Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet US President Donald Trump.

Updated on: Jun 16, 2017, 21:18:41 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar is expected to lead the advance party to Washington early next week in order to firm up the official agenda before Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet US President Donald Trump on June 26. While Jaishankar may leave for Washington around June 21, PM Modi leaves for his first meeting with Trump via Amsterdam on June 24 morning.

Jaishankar will be meeting his counterpart Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and key White House officials before PM’s arrival to flesh out the content/deliverables of the crucial meeting. (PTI File Photo)

While the focus of Modi’s forthcoming visit is to build up a personal rapport or a working relationship with President Trump, Jaishankar will be meeting his counterpart Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and key White House officials before PM’s arrival to flesh out the content/deliverables of the crucial meeting. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will accompany PM to Washington.

Even though the US defence manufacturers are keen to push up the offer of F-18 and F-16 fighters under the “Make in India” rubric, South Block wants the process to be first decided within the Indian Defence Ministry in consultation with Air Force before committing anything on a bilateral document. The Indian focus is more on the civil aviation sector with the intentions of creating jobs on both sides. “With Indian private airlines committing to buy nearly 260 passenger jets including latest 737-10 jets from Boeing Aerospace, no less than 25,000 new jobs will be created in Trump’s America,” said an US diplomat.

South Block said the main purpose of the “no frills” visit is for PM Modi and President Trump to come on the same page on key issues such as terrorism, UN reforms, South China Sea and the future of climate change. While PM Modi is expected to raise Indian concerns over H 1B visa, the fundamental purpose is the build one to one rapport with President Trump and his administration with better sharing of information on key bilateral issues.

PM Modi will be holding a top CEOs dinner on June 25 along with a community event in Washington before he goes to meet President Trump. At the CEOs forum, the PM will invite American mega companies to invest in India in high technology sectors including cybersecurity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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