Secretary Pompeo, defence chief Esper to visit India: Increased sharing of intel on agenda

New Delhi, Oct 21: India and the United States will hold their 2+2 ministerial meeting in New Delhi next week, the US has said. This would be the third meeting in this format.

US state secretary Mike Pompeo and defence chief, Mike Esper will travel to New Delhi for a day long in person meetings with their Indian counterparts S Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh.

The meetings would be important in the wake of the tensions with China. Esper said that it is the world's largest democracy, a very capable country with very talented people, and they face off, every day, Chinese aggression in the Himalayas.

India will be the most consequential partner for us, in the Indo-Pacific for us for sure in this century. He also said that his visit is part of a broader US initiative to strengthen older alliance and develop new ones against Russian and Chinese efforts to build their own global power networks.

Officials in Delhi say that during the talks, India would cover increased sharing of intelligence. This is the third edition of the meeting. The first one was hosted in 2018 by India, while the second one was hosted in the US in 2019.