The U.S. State Department has welcomed the opportunity to work with India’s new Foreign Secretary, former Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Dr. S. Jaishankar, whose appointment was announced on Wednesday along with news of the “curtailment of tenure” of the incumbent Sujatha Singh.
At the daily press briefing State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “We appreciate the productive relationship we had with Foreign Secretary Singh and look forward to further advancing the U.S.-India relationship with the new Foreign Secretary, who as you know, we have worked quite closely with.”
Mr. Jaishankar began his tenure here in late 2013 in the very eye of a diplomatic storm, the crisis engendered by the arrest and strip-search of Indian Deputy Consul-General Devyani Khobragade, in December of that year, for visa violations linked to underpaying her domestic staff.
Besides what many viewed as his adroit handling of the events at that time, the Ambassador appeared to have further made his mark in the course of the year during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to the U.S., and more recently during U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to India.
Commenting on the upward momentum in the bilateral engagement Ms. Psaki added, “We have an important and growing relationship with India as evidenced by the fact that the Secretary of State and the President of the U.S. were both there in the last couple of weeks.” The U.S. administration looked forward to working with the new ambassador whenever they arrive in Washington, she added.
She did not comment on a question on whether the interim absence of an Indian Ambassador here could impact any specific bilateral policy matters.
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