U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo in India on first leg of Asia trip
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[October 26, 2020]
By Alasdair Pal
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State of
Mike Pompeo landed in India on Monday, the first leg of a five-day Asian
trip aimed at strengthening strategic ties in the face of growing
Chinese influence across the region.
Pompeo was met at New Delhi airport by U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Juster,
according to a pool report.
Pompeo is due to meet India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
on Monday evening, before he and U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper hold
a joint summit with Jaishankar and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh
on Tuesday.
Later that day, Pompeo and Esper will call on India's Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, according to a draft itinerary of the trip released by
India's foreign ministry.
The trip is part of the latest U.S. effort to bolster allies against an
increasingly assertive China, which has been making political and
military inroads across Asia, analysts say.
Pompeo is due to travel to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, two Indian Ocean
countries where China has financed and built various infrastructure, to
the alarm of India and the United States.
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U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to India
Kenneth Juster greet each other at an airport in New Delhi, India,
October 26, 2020. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/Pool
India is locked in a military standoff with China on their contested
Himalayan border.
Pompeo will end his trip, which comes in the final week before the
U.S. presidential election, in Indonesia, one of several Southeast
Asian countries wary of growing Chinese activities in the disputed
South China Sea.
(Reporting by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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