NEW DELHI, Sep 14: For over a decade, the US shunned him over the Gujarat riots. It even revoked his visa in 2005. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now all set to be accorded a grand welcome personally by US President Barack Obama when he visits Washington later this month.
New Delhi is still giving final touches to Mr Modi’s week-long visit to the US from September 25 during which he will address the UN General Assembly, hold bilateral talks with President Obama and meet many other world leaders. He was earlier scheduled to leave on September 24 but the trip has now been deferred by a day.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh today confirmed that Mr Modi will deliver his speech at the UN on September 27. He will thus become the second Indian Prime Minister to speak in Hindi at the UN, the first being Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
On the margins of the UNGA, the Prime Minister will hold bilateral talks with several leaders, including Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. There is no indication yet of a meeting between Mr Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York though the two countries are said to be in touch.
The Indian community is planning to accord Mr Modi a grand public reception at Madison Square Garden, a huge multi-purpose indoor arena in Midtown Manhattan in New York City with a capacity of over 20,000 on September 28.
The event will be hosted by the first Indian-American Miss America Nina Davuluri and PBS Weekend Newshour’s Indian-American anchor, Hari Sreenivasan. The huge Gujarati community is said to have taken the lead in according the reception to Mr Modi.
On September 29, the Prime Minister will fly to Washington for talks with President Obama on the entire gamut of bilateral ties as well as global developments, including the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr Obama will host a dinner for him the same night before bilateral talks at the White House the next day. This will be followed by a lunch hosted by Vice-President Joe Biden in honour of the Indian leader. The Modi-Obama meeting will be the first interaction between the two leaders. This will not provide them an opportunity to measure each other but also consider ways to give a new direction to the relationship between the two large democracies.
The meeting will take place at a time when the ties between New Delhi and Washington have cooled somewhat over the arrest and strip search of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York late last year in an alleged visa fraud case.
The talks between the two leaders are expected to be focused on economic, defence, civil nuclear cooperation and trade and technology issued. Trade between the two countries has grown from only 5.6 billion dollars in 1990 to over 63 billion dollars in 2013. (UNI)
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