Post Modi-Biden meet, focus now on moving ahead on many issues: White House

A fortnight after the first in-person meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden here, the White House has said that the focus of the Indo-US bilateral relations is now on continuing to move forward on a range of issues, including economy, national security and getting the pandemic under control.

Since the September 24 meeting between Modi and Biden at the White House, there has been a flurry of high-level visits between the two countries and several Cabinet-level visits are in the pipeline in the next few weeks.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, addressing reporters at her daily news conference on Friday, said that the Quad and bilateral meetings here in September were an opportunity "to discuss the importance of the relationship and the partnership, the work that can be done moving forward as well as of course the bilateral meeting".

"At this point, the focus is going to be on continuing to work through high-level interlocutors, whether it's the Secretary of State and the leaders at the State Department, or leaders from our national security team about how we can continue to move forward on a range of issues, whether it's economic security, physical national security, addressing Covid, and getting the pandemic under control.

"So, that work will continue at lower than the leader level, but still high levels in the weeks and months ahead," Psaki said on India-US relationship.

At President Biden's invitation, Modi and his counterparts Scott Morrison from Australia and Yoshihide Suga from Japan also attended the first in-person Quad summit during which they announced a slew of new initiatives to take on common challenges, amidst muscle flexing by an assertive China in the strategic region.

Meanwhile, some important bilateral visits have taken place and some are going to happen in the coming weeks, including on some key areas like climate change, defence, Indo-Pacific and Afghanistan.

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat was in Washington last week and the Deputy Secretary of State Windy Sherman has just concluded a visit to India.

On Friday, the two countries held their 16th Defence Policy Group meeting and the Pentagon announced the visit of the US Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Mike Gilday to India next week.

A senior-level Biden Administration official from the US Trade Representative's office visited India this week for trade talks.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to travel to the US, possibly next week.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, along with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, is likely to travel to Washington DC in November for the next round of 2+2 meeting to be hosted by their American counterparts Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Tony Blinken.