NSA Sullivan to visit India to finalise important ongoing initiatives: White House

Jake Sullivan, youngest national security advisor, visits India to strengthen U.S.-India partnership and finalize key initiatives before leaving office.

Outgoing U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will travel to India January 5 and 6 to meet his counterpart Ajit K Doval and other top government officials for a final round of talks with them on a wide range of bilateral, regional and global issues and to finalise some ongoing initiatives that were important priorities for them to wrap up, the White House said on Friday.

Mr. Sullivan, 48, the youngest national security advisor when President Joe Bident appointed him on January 20, 2021, would also deliver a major India-centric foreign policy speech at IIT, New Delhi during his last trip to India before leaving office. 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.

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While there, the main purpose will be a capstone engagement and dialogue with his counterpart, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, a senior administration official told reporters during a conference call Friday afternoon.

It will cover a range of issues across the breadth of our partnership, but with a specific focus on the strategic technology cooperation that we have had across a range of domains, from defense to space to artificial intelligence, the official added.

“The two national security advisors during this engagement will not only take stock of the progress that we have made over the last four years, which has been a historic and transformative period in this relationship as well, but also continue to finalise some ongoing initiatives that were important priorities for us to wrap up to continue our technology cooperation through the end of the administration and to identify new opportunities that we hope with an upcoming team, will continue to take forward,” said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

From the views of the Biden administration, the U.S.-Indian relationship has not only been one of the bright points and a real foreign policy prairie and area of legacy achievement for the Biden administration, but it is also a relationship where they have seen continued bipartisan support and momentum from administration to administration in the United States, said the official.