India, US to expand defence ties in cyber, space domains

New Delhi, May 24

US President Joe Biden said he was committed to making India-US ties the “closest on the planet”. He said this during a bilateral with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Quad summit in Japan today.

Modi gifts Mathura’s Sanjhi art to Biden

PM Narendra Modi presented Sanjhi art to US President Joe Biden in Tokyo, acquainting him with the unique Mathura art of hand cutting designs on paper. Sanjhi recreates Lord Krishna’s life. The PM presented a wooden hand-carved box with Rogan painting to his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida. To former Japanese PMs, he presented Pattamadai silk mats from Tamil Nadu.

They also committed to deepening their “major defence partnership” by expanding cooperation in new domains, including space and cyber, and launching a dialogue on artificial intelligence this year.

The two leaders also resolved to encourage greater economic engagement and expand their partnership on health, pandemic, and critical and emerging technologies, said a White House statement.

“India-US ties in true sense is a partnership of trust,” PM Modi told Biden, adding, “Our common interest and shared values have strengthened.”

Biden condemned Russia’s unjustifiable war against Ukraine and while PM Modi refrained from doing so, both committed to humanitarian assistance, and discussed how to cooperate to manage disruptions caused by the conflict, in particular the rise in energy and food prices.

The two leaders touched in detail on cooperation in critical technologies, an area of acute interest to India. Both sides have acknowledged its importance with the launch of a US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) which plans to join six of India’s technology innovation hubs to support at least 25 joint research projects this year. The areas, to begin with, are AI and data science.

They also touched on three areas which were finalised in Tokyo. The first was the establishment of the Indo-Pacific partnership for maritime domain awareness which will play a key role in preserving economic security (keeping an eye on illegal Chinese fishing) and in responding to humanitarian crises.

The second was a pact to enable the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to keep investing in Indian private sector-led projects in critical areas such as renewable energy, agriculture, health, and SME financing. The third was to expand collaboration in antimicrobial resistance, as well as diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

The two countries are also renewing the Indo-US Vaccine Action Programme, which since its establishment led to the manufacture of India’s first indigenous and low-cost vaccines, said the White House.