Modi recalls peace overture to Islamabad in meeting with Pompeo and Mattis

India and the US signed a foundational defence partnership agreement during the dialogue and also agreed on several other measures to boost defence ties

Updated on: Sep 7, 2018, 10:02:26 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi recalled his December 2015 peace overture to Islamabad before dignitaries including Secretary of Defence James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and General Joseph Dunford, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff who called on him for 45 minutes. The US delegation was in India for the two-plus-two dialogue between Mattis and Pompeo and their Indian counterparts, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, and met the Prime Minister for around 45-minutes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets the US Secretary of State, Michael R. Pompeo and the US Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, in New Delhi, Thursday, September 06, 2018. (PTI Photo)

Pompeo conveyed to India that Pakistan has been told to take action against pan-Islamic terrorist group and not just talk; Pompeo spent a few hours in Pakistan before arriving in India on Wednesday and had a get-tough-on-terror message for the country’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan.

India and the US signed a foundational defence partnership agreement during the dialogue and also agreed on several other measures to boost defence ties. Prime Minister Modi is believed to have personally reviewed several aspects of the dialogue with all principals on the eve of the talks.

Hindustan Times learns that contrary to what was expected, the issue of a possible visit by US President Donald Trump to India early next year was not taken up during the meeting but that PM Modi asked the visiting dignitaries to convey his greetings to their President. He fondly recalled his interactions with President Trump and told the US delegation that both Swaraj and Sitharaman were very happy with the outcome of the visit.

The visiting team did not raise the issue of the waiver to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CATSAA) that would facilitate India’s plan to purchase S-400 missile systems from Russia. Only macro issues were discussed, a senior South Block official said on condition of anonymity. “There is a CATSAA waiver by President Trump. We will discuss the issue when the acquisition is finalized,” said a senior South Block official.

The Indian side, however, briefed the team on its legacy relationship with Iran for oil purchases and the effort being made to reduce the imports. The Indian side also explained the importance of Chahbahar port in stabilizing Afghanistan. Both Pompeo and Mattis said that US will work with India on how to sort out the two issues with Iran, both of which could see India fall afoul of US sanctions against the West Asian nation.

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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