India, US expected to move forward on set of initiatives in 2022: WH

Washington DC: In 2022, India and the United States are expected to move forward on a wide-ranging set of initiatives, including fight against the pandemic, climate change, QUAD, and new and emerging technologies, the White House said on Monday.

“As you know, back in September, the (US) president (Joe Biden) hosted Prime Minister Modi at the White House and their meeting was about launching a new chapter in the history of US-India relationship. At that time, the two leaders laid out their shared vision for US-India relationship and (we) will continue to work closely this year,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference.

“You can expect our governments will be moving forward on a wide-ranging set of initiatives from cooperating to fight the pandemic, scaling up action to address climate change, working bilaterally and through the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), expand our cooperation in trade and investment, cyber, and in new and emerging technologies,” Psaki said.

She was responding to questions on the agenda of the Biden administration with regard to the India-US relationship in 2022.

“And continuing to talk about as always, we are focused on strengthening the deep ties between our people and our shared democratic values that underpin the relationship. But obviously, we’re going to continue to build from here,” Psaki said.

In response to another question on China’s aggressive behaviour on the border with India, she said the United States continues to monitor the situation.

“We continue to closely monitor the situation. We continue to support dialogue and peaceful resolution of these border disputes. We’ve been pretty clear how we view Beijing’s behaviour in the region around the world. We believe it can be destabilising, and we’re concerned by the PRC’s attempt to intimidate its neighbours,” she said.

“We’ll continue to stand with our partners on that,” Psaki added.