U.S. Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal will travel to New Delhi during June 6-9, where she will aim to kick-start bilateral cooperation with the new BJP-led Indian administration, after a lull of several months in this space.
Although the State Department said that Ms. Biswal would meet “a range of officials” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, there was no mention of any plan to meet Mr. Modi himself.
Ms. Biswal will reach New Delhi at the fag end of a trip involving stops in Tajikistan and then China, but she will arrive armed with enthusiasm to push forward with “the full scope of bilateral and regional issues,” the Department said.
Emphasising that this would be the first visit to India by a senior State Department official since India’s national elections this spring, the statement announcing her visit added that she would “meet with key strategic thinkers and business leaders.”
