OAN’s James Meyers
2:23 PM – Friday, September 8, 2023
President Joe Biden began his Group of 20 Summit two day visit by meeting privately with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The White House claimed there was “undeniable warmth and confidence” in one another.
Biden spent 52 minutes with Modi discussing strengthening ties between the two nations at his home in New Delhi. Kurt Campbell, a Biden adviser on the Indo-Pacific, told reporters that the sentiments shared between the two have replaced a sense of distrust and uncertainty that was previously assumed between the United States and India.
“What I have seen grown over time is an undeniable warmth and confidence between the two leaders,” according to Campbell.
The private meeting comes after over a dozen in-person or virtual meetings have taken place between the two leaders since 2021, to discuss shared major concerns. Those include artificial intelligence, global supply chain resilience and climate change.
With the announcement of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declining to attend the G20 Summit, experts believe it can give Biden the opportunity to strengthen ties with India further.
“There are undeniable opportunities here for the United States,” Campbell said. “We fully intend to strengthen and deepen our relationship. We leave it to China, in particular, to discuss and explain why they’re not here.”
Biden and Modi announced a list of agreements after the meeting including trade and technology, which consists of semi-conductors, telecom and computing.
Additionally, the leaders announced they had settled the seventh and last outstanding World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute between the two sides.
Modi said he “looked forward to welcoming President Biden to the next Quad Leaders’ Summit to be hosted by India in 2024.”
Biden also reportedly pushed Modi on the state of democracy in his country during their meeting.
“In every meeting that I’ve been in with the President, the president’s very clear about the importance of the health of democracy,” Campbell said. “He doesn’t do this in such a way that suggests that one country is lecturing to another but rather that we all face shared challenges and we think it’s important that we’re constantly asking the hard questions about our democracy.”
“India continues to be a work in progress, and I think the key here is for us to maintain a respectful dialogue and to approach some of the challenges with a degree of humility given some of the challenges that we’ve faced in our own country as well by link,” Campbell said.
Ahead of the President’s arrival in India, U.S. officials have been working to draft joint declarations that could possibly be signed off at the end of the G20 Summit.
However, according to diplomats, talks have been difficult and it reflected the divide within the summit over the most contentious global issues.
Campbell downplayed the divide and said, “this is the way it always goes. It comes down to this. We are finding that on many of the issues that matter to us, we are making progress. There’s clearly been some forward movement on climate.”
Experts claim with Biden’s recent drop in the polls, fellow leaders across the globe are not sure if Biden’s pledge of a strong U.S. role in the world will be sustained.
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