Washington
\nUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar have discussed the Ukraine conflict on the sidelines of a summit in Japan, according to a statement from Washington.
\nThe US official met with his Indian counterpart at a gathering of the so-called \u2018Quad\u2019 nations \u2013 Australia, India, Japan and the US \u2013 in Tokyo on Sunday. During the discussion, Blinken \u201cunderscored the importance of realizing a just and enduring peace for Ukraine consistent with the UN Charter,\u201d the State Department said.
\nThe meeting came ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s proposed visit to Ukraine later this month, the details of which are currently being finalized, according to an official cited by The Hindu newspaper.
\nThe trip is seen as an attempt to balance New Delhi\u2019s ties with the West, which was reportedly frustrated by Modi\u2019s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month. Russia was chosen as Modi\u2019s first bilateral visit after he assumed office for a third term.
\nAfter the meeting with Blinken, Jaishankar noted on X (formerly Twitter) that bilateral ties are progressing \u201csteadily,\u201d but did not mention Ukraine.
\nThe Ukraine conflict did feature in a joint statement released after the Quad foreign ministers\u2019 meeting in Tokyo, which expressed \u201cdeepest concern\u201d over the hostilities and their \u201cterrible and tragic humanitarian consequences.\u201d
\nThe \u2018Quad\u2019 is an informal grouping largely seen as a Washington-led initiative aimed at balancing China\u2019s influence in the Indo-Pacific.
\nIndia has so far refused to condemn Russia or downgrade ties over the Ukraine conflict, despite pressure from the West. Jaishankar has repeatedly stated that New Delhi aims to balance its ties with both the West and Moscow, also stressing that peace can be achieved through dialogue and diplomacy. Last month, New Delhi refused to sign the final document of a Swiss-hosted \u2018peace summit\u2019 on Ukraine, to which Russia was not invited.
\nDuring his visit to Moscow, Modi again stressed that there is no \u201cpeace on the battlefield\u201d and that solutions \u201ccan only be found through dialogue.\u201d
\nUkraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky reacted angrily to Modi\u2019s meeting with Putin, which he described as a \u201cdevastating blow to peace efforts.\u201d New Delhi reportedly summoned the Ukrainian ambassador over the remarks.
\nModi\u2019s visit to Russia came under similar scrutiny in Washington. US State Department official Donald Lu told a congressional hearing last week that the White House had been disappointed by the \u201csymbolism\u201d and \u201ctiming\u201d of Modi\u2019s visit. Senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden were also \u201cfrustrated\u201d that the visit coincided with a NATO 75th anniversary summit in the US capital, the Washington Post reported.
\nResponding to the criticism, New Delhi told the West to recognize the reality of multipolarity, and that countries have \u201cfreedom of choice\u201d in terms of their engagements on the global stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar have discussed the Ukraine conflict on the sidelines of a summit in Japan, according to a statement from Washington. The US official met with his Indian counterpart at a gathering of the so-called \u2018Quad\u2019 nations \u2013 Australia, India, Japan and the US …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":68060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68063,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68045\/revisions\/68063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}