 "India-US 5th 2+2 dialogue: Wars in Israel, Ukraine key parts of discussion")
The ongoing wars in Israel and Ukraine are expected to figure in the fifth India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue on Friday, people in the know said.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs announced Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will meet with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd J Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J Blinken in New Delhi. The city had last hosted the summit in 2020.
The government has said the ministers will take stock of contemporary regional issues and exchange views about shared priorities for augmenting cooperation in multilateral platforms, and through frameworks such as Quad.
While the dialogue has historically focused on only bilateral issues, people familiar with the development said the war in Gaza is set to be discussed. America’s closest ally in West Asia, Israel is also a key supplier of unmanned aerial vehicles, missiles, and radar systems to India, shipping in $4.2 billion worth of defence gear between 2001 and 2021, according to the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database.
The defence partnership with Tel Aviv has picked up pace since 2017 when India awarded Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) its largest defence contract of almost $2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM). In 2021, both sides successfully jointly tested the defence system.
Jointly developed by IAI and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), in partnership with other defence companies in Israel and India, the MRSAM is being used by all the three wings of the Indian army and also Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Reports said India had secured two more contracts for long endurance drones from Israel.
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“In a similar vein, both sides are also expected to discuss the continuing war in Ukraine, on which a wider gap exists between the foreign policy of both parties,” a diplomatic source said. The stalemate in Ukraine, 20 months after the Russian invasion began in February 2022, has recently been overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war. However, the diplomatic implications for India's energy sector have remained serious as the discounts on crude oil received by India from Moscow have reduced in recent months.
The war in Ukraine has seen a geopolitical deadlock at the United Nations (UN) as both Russia and Ukraine dig into their positions after repeated waves of offensive and counteroffensive pushes. Meanwhile, the Western allies led by the United States and European Union have piled sanctions on Moscow.
India has abstained from all major votes held at the UN on condemning Russia, so far. New Delhi also abstained from a vote to remove Russia from the UN Human Rights Council in the initial days of the war.
A key bilateral engagement mechanism, the 2+2 format has been used by both sides to reaffirm the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic partnership. “The 2+2 will enable a high-level review of progress being made in cross-cutting aspects of defence and security cooperation, technology value chain collaborations and people-to-people ties,” the MEA said.
Both sides will also look at the progress made so far on the futuristic roadmap for the India-US partnership, taking off from leader-level discussions in June and September this year.