NEW DELHI: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday (Might 23) invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington, reaffirming the significance of a relationship that has come underneath rising pressure, every week after the USA held a warm summit with China.
After becoming a member of President Donald Trump in Beijing every week in the past, Rubio – visiting each Asian powers for the primary time – flew to New Delhi and noticed Modi for greater than an hour, inviting the premier to go to the White Home quickly.
Rubio “underscored the strategic significance of the US-India partnership, rooted in our shared democratic, profound financial and business alternative and the robust private ties” between Modi and Trump, State Division spokesman Tommy Pigott mentioned, glossing over final 12 months’s friction between the world’s two largest democracies.
Trump has shaken up core assumptions on US international coverage, together with a dedication to constructing a stronger relationship with India, which was barely talked about in his administration’s nationwide safety technique launched final 12 months.
Visiting China, Trump hailed the reception he obtained from President Xi Jinping, regardless of restricted concrete bulletins.
Trump additionally spoke of the USA and China being a “G2” – a formulation that had fallen out of favour lately as US allies worry being shut out of Washington’s dealings with a rising China.
STARTING WITH NUNS
Rubio, a religious Catholic, started his four-day, four-city tour by touring the headquarters of Mom Teresa’s charity within the jap metropolis of Kolkata and praying over her tomb.
Sporting a yellow garland over his go well with, Rubio, joined by his spouse Jeanette, smiled earlier than an meeting of nuns, all clad within the late humanitarian’s signature white and blue saris.
“Rubio spoke about aiding the homeless, terminally ailing and people by leprosy,” Sister Marie Juan of Missionaries of Charity advised reporters after his hour-and-a-half-long go to.
“He was pleased to hope and we have been additionally pleased to have him,” she mentioned.
Whereas Trump not often raises human rights, some components of his base have expressed considerations over the remedy of Christians underneath the Hindu nationalist Modi, making Rubio’s alternative of first cease extremely symbolic.
Rights teams say there was an increase in assaults on minority Christians throughout India, together with vandalism of church buildings, since Modi got here to energy in 2014.
The federal government rejects the claims as exaggerated and politically motivated.
