The U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, will visit India from June 23-25. The primary objective of this visit is to co-chair the fourth India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue along with Indian External Affairs Minister, Salman Khurshid on June 24.
During the Dialogue, both sides will review the progress in the India-U.S. bilateral relations, and exchange views on regional and international issues.
The two sides are expected to deliberate on issues such as the expansion of cooperation in areas of defence and security, trade and investment, science and technology, and clean energy and environment. They are also expected to identify new initiatives to strengthen bilateral cooperation in these areas. In addition to the Strategic Dialogue, Secretary Kerry will also co-chair the India-U.S. Higher Education Dialogue with the Indian Minister for Human Resource Development, Pallam Raju, on June 25.
This is Secretary Kerry’s first visit to India as Secretary of State, and his first meeting with the External Affairs Minister, since both of them assumed their respective offices. This visit comes at a time when India is witnessing significant realignments in its domestic politics while the U.S. is busy tackling its cyber-spying allegations.
India-U.S. relations are increasingly broad based, covering cooperation in areas such as trade and economic, defence and security, education, science and technology, high-technology, civil nuclear energy, space technology and applications, clean energy, environment and health. People to people interaction provide further vitality and strength to bilateral relationship. There have been regular contacts at political and official levels and wide-ranging dialogue architecture on bilateral, regional and global issues has been put in place. The U.S. is the fourth largest source of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) into India.