India’s Modi begins visit to Washington to build ties between Biden and US

WASHINGTON, June 21 (Reuters) – US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to deepen defense and technology cooperation between their countries during Modi’s official visit to the White House, despite lingering concerns over human rights in India.

Two days of carefully orchestrated official events got off to a rocky start on Wednesday afternoon, however, when Modi arrived so late for a planned National Science Foundation tour that the president’s wife, Jill Biden, a teacher, started without him. .

Modi, who arrived about 30 minutes after the tour was scheduled to start, apologized. Later on Wednesday, Modi is scheduled to have a private dinner with the Bidens at the White House. Modi will attend a state dinner on Thursday night, after addressing Congress and holding a rare press conference with Biden.

Washington wants India to be a strategic counterweight to China and sees India as a critical partnership. Modi is looking to lift the influence that India, the world’s most populous country with 1.4 billion, has on the world stage.

Biden is expected to raise US concerns about India’s democratic backsliding under Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party during the visit, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday. “We do it in a way where we don’t want to preach or claim that we don’t have challenges ourselves,” he said.

US companies warmly welcome Modi and trade deals in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and investments in India by Micron Technology and other US companies are expected during the visit.

At his event with Jill Biden, Modi invited American students to come to India and said he was happy to meet “creative young minds” as soon as he arrived in Washington. Modi said India was training students in AI and had started labs across the country.

More than 200,000 Indian students were studying in the United States last year, according to the White House.

Thursday’s press conference is unusual. Modi has not addressed a single press conference in India since he became prime minister some nine years ago. In May 2019, he attended a press conference in India, but never answered questions.

EXECUTIVES GREETS MODI

Modi has been to the United States five times since he became prime minister in 2014, but the trip will be his first with the full diplomatic status of a state visit.

Modi will address American CEOs at a reception on Friday, as American companies plan new investments in India.

Tuesday the met with tesla (TSLA.O) boss Elon Musk in New York, who said later it plans to make the vehicles available in India as soon as possible.

Biden is under pressure from his fellow Democrats to discuss human rights with Modi.

rights defenders, who plans to protest During Modi’s visit, he said on Wednesday that Biden should publicly denounce Modi’s human rights record, saying the US administrations’ approach of raising issues privately with the Indian leader has not stopped what they described as deteriorating rights. human rights in India.

“It hasn’t worked,” Zaki Barzinji, who served in the Obama administration as the White House liaison with religious minorities, said at a news conference in Washington organized by Indian-American civil rights and interfaith organizations.

‘SUBTLE SHIFT’ ABOUT RUSSIA

Both Biden and Modi are dealing with Beijing’s bending in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

“This visit is not about China. But the question of China’s role in the military domain, the technological domain, the economic domain will be on the agenda,” Sullivan said.

New Delhi, which often rewards its nonalignment in great-power conflicts abroad, has frustrated Washington by maintaining some defense and economic ties with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

Biden will mention Russia and Ukraine ahead of the G20 summit later this year in India, Sullivan said.

A senior State Department official said there had been a “subtle shift” in India’s approach to Russia since Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in September that “Today’s era is not an era of war.”

Other Indian officials have challenged Russia for violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity and for its rhetoric on nuclear weapons in recent months, the official said, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.

On Thursday, Biden and Modi will make announcements on the “joint development and joint production of military systems, including some very advanced systems,” the official said, describing this as part of a broader move by India to buy weapons from other sources. than the traditional supplier from Moscow.

Washington accepts that India will continue to buy Russian oil as long as it does so “at rock bottom prices” below a price ceiling agreed by developed nations, the official added.

Reporting by Steve Holland, Simon Lewis, Kanishka Singh, and Nandita Bose; Edited by Heather Timmons and Grant McCool

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