US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan will visit India on January 5 and 6 to meet his counterpart Ajit Doval and other top government officials for a final round of talks with them on a wide range of bilateral, regional and global issues, the White House said on Friday.
Sullivan is also expected to meet External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in what is said to be last high-profile visit to India by an official of outgoing Biden administration in the United States. The two leaders met in Washington DC last month.
Sullivan’s visit on Sunday and Monday will include a speech at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi in which he will stress that the outgoing administration sees the US partnership with India as central to its regional and global priorities, and one with support from both major political parties.
Sullivan’s visit is expected to include discussions with Indian counterparts about the impact of Chinese dams, a senior US official was quoted as saying by a report in Reuters.
Washington and its Western allies have long viewed India as a counter to China’s rising influence in Asia and beyond, the report said.
“We have certainly seen in many places in the Indo-Pacific that upstream dams that the Chinese have created, including in the Mekong region, can have really potentially damaging environmental but also climate impacts on downstream countries,” the unnamed official old Reuters.
Sullivan, 48, the youngest national security advisor when President Joe Biden appointed him on January 20, 2021. He would be succeeded by Congressman Michael Waltz on January 20, when Donald J Trump would be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.
India has conveyed concerns to Beijing about China’s plan to build a hydropower dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo River which flows into India. The Ministry of External Affairs Beijing to ensure that the interests of downstream states are not harmed by its activities. New Delhi has also indicated plans to monitor the situation had ‘take necessary measures’ to protect its interests.
Chinese officials, as per the Reuters report, said that hydropower projects in Tibet will not have a major impact on the environment or on downstream water supplies.
The construction of that dam, which will be the largest of its kind in the world with an estimated capacity of 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, was approved last month, the Reuters report said.
India-US technology initiative
Topics such as civilian nuclear cooperation, artificial intelligence, space, military licensing and Chinese economic overcapacity will also be discussed during Sullivan’s visit, the report said.
India and the US launched a technology initiative in 2022 outlining collaboration on semiconductor production and developing artificial intelligence. The accord was critical in sealing a deal to allow US-based General Electric to partner with India’s Hindustan Aeronautics to produce jet engines in India.
India and the US have grown closer recently, in part in response to China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. Biden threw Prime Minister Narendra Modi a state dinner last year.
But ties have also been strained by US prosecutors’ accusation in 2023 that an official in Modi’s government was involved in a foiled assassination plot against an activist of India’s Sikh minority in New York, and the killing of another Sikh activist in Canada.
