An Indian official informed that Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, on the sidelines UN General Assembly, will be holding a trilateral meeting with Foreign Minister of the United States and Japan.
Sushma Swaraj is on a week-long trip to the United States starting from Monday. During her stay, she is scheduled to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session and will be holding many bilateral and trilateral meetings with leaders attending the session. She will be addressing the annual session of the UN General Assembly on September 23.
Indian Ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna and India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin received Swaraj and the high-level Indian delegation on the airport.
She will be having a meeting with her US and Japanese counterpart Rex Tillerson and Taro Kono on Monday. With China trying to show its strength in the region, this meeting amongst the delegation is likely to hold importance discussing further cooperation between them. They are expected to discuss on the territorial disputes, by China, who is claiming both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. It is also said that Beijing has also built a militarised reef in the region it claims to control.
On the same day, Swaraj will also be attending the meeting on UN reforms, hosted by the US and chaired by President Donald Trump.
During her week-long stay, the main topics of discussion for the Foreign Minister will be on issues of climate change, terrorism, people centric migration and peacekeeping are other key focus areas.
India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin informed that on the issue of Climate change action, Swaraj will also participate in a special panel of selected countries by the UN Secretary General.
The minister is scheduled to have a series of meetings on Monday including that with Tunisian foreign minister Khemaies Jhinaoui, Bhutanese prime minister Tshering Tobgay, Danish foreign minister Anders Samuelsen, Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics and her Bolivian counterpart Fernando Huanacuni Mamani. However, the schedule of Indian Foreign Minister does not involve any meeting with her Pakistani counterpart. Though both the leaders will be crossing ways on several occasions, including in a meeting that of SAARC and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
She will be leaving back for India on 25 Sep.