US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Delhi next week, to participate in the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting
Diplomat Times (New Delhi)- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to India next week to attend the meeting of G20 foreign ministers and meet senior Indian officials to reaffirm America’s strong partnership with the country.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will travel to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and India February 28-March 3, 2023. On February 28, he will visit Astana, Kazakhstan, where he will meet with senior Kazakh officials to deepen our bilateral cooperation.
He then will participate in a C5+1 Ministerial with representatives of each of the five Central Asian states, to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Central Asian countries, and to collaborate with the region on solutions to shared global challenges.
The C5+1 Ministerial will focus on enhancing economic, energy and environmental, and security cooperation among the United States, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan. The Secretary will meet separately on the margins of the C5+1 ministerial with senior government officials from the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan to discuss opportunities for bilateral and multilateral cooperation and advance our shared goal of a prosperous, secure, and democratic region.
He will then travel to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he will meet with Uzbekistani officials to further advance our partnership on a range of bilateral and regional issues.
On March 1, he will travel to New Delhi to participate in the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which will focus on strengthening multilateralism and deepening cooperation on food and energy security, sustainable development, counter-narcotics, global health, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and gender equality and women’s empowerment.
He will meet with Indian government officials and civil society to reaffirm our strong partnership.
Speaking to a group of civil society leaders at a New Delhi hotel, Blinken said that the relationship between the United States and India was “one of the most important in the world”.
His visit in Delhi 2021 he has spoke to civil societies people “The Indian people and the American people believe in human dignity and equality of opportunity, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms including freedom of religion and belief … these are the fundamental tenets of democracies like ours,” he said.
“And of course, both of our democracies are works in progress. As friends we talk about that.”
Attendees included religious leaders such as Geshe Dorji Damdul of New Delhi’s Tibet House, a cultural centre of the Dalai Lama.
In his New Delhi meetings, Blinken is expected to raise India’s human rights record as well as a recent religion-based citizenship law widely seen as discriminatory towards Muslims.
