Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to meet Barack Obama in Hangzhou, China, on the sidelines of the G20 summit on September 4-5 in what will probably be the last meeting between them before the US president leaves office early next year.
This will follow the next edition of the Indo-US strategic and commercial dialogue in Delhi on August 30-31 when the two sides are expected to sign a key cyber relationship document that had been agreed during PM Modi’s trip to Washington in June.
While PM Modi is not travelling to New York for this year’s United Nations general assembly meeting, he will be in Laos for just over 24 hours during the September 7-8 East Asia and India-Asean summits, making it difficult to squeeze in a meeting with Obama on that occasion.
The two sides are therefore trying to organise a meeting in China to review measures Obama and Modi have initiated to revitalise bilateral ties since mid-2014 besides discussing geopolitics and the geo-economic situation amid China’s posture in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
Besides travelling to the US four times since becoming Prime Minister and hosting Obama for India’s Republic Day celebrations in 2015, the two have met a number of times on the sidelines of various multilateral events.
