Vinay Mohan Kwatra has been appointed the next Indian ambassador to the US, New Delhi announced on Friday. The senior diplomat had been serving as India’s foreign secretary since May 2022.
Kwatra joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1988 and was posted to the country’s permanent mission in Geneva. He also previously served as ambassador to France and Nepal. Kwatra will replace Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who was the ambassador to the US from February 2020 to January this year.
The new appointment comes at a time when the US is trying to counter China’s regional influence by fostering closer ties with New Delhi. At the same time, Washington has on many occasions expressed “concerns” over India’s relationship with Russia.
The visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow last week irked officials in the Biden administration, according to Bloomberg and the Washington Post. The US tried to persuade India to reschedule the visit so that it would not coincide with a summit of NATO leaders in Washington the same week, the Post said. Senior US cabinet members were also “frustrated” over the “optics” of the trip, the report claimed.
US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti also voiced criticism. “In times of conflict, there is no such thing as strategic autonomy,” he said at a recent summit, apparently taking a swipe at New Delhi’s relationship with Moscow. “No war is distant,” the diplomat claimed.
Meanwhile, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan flew to India last month – just days after Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister for a third consecutive term.
During Sullivan’s trip, the two sides agreed to prevent the leakage of sensitive technologies to “countries of concern.” US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who accompanied Sullivan in New Delhi, later said that the White House had expressed reservations to India over collaboration with Russia in the defense and technology sectors.
In recent months, India has also taken exception to comments on human rights and religious freedoms by the US State Department and NGOs, including in the latest annual Human Rights Report, and has reacted strongly to US criticism of the arrest of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Ties between New Delhi and Washington have also been strained over an alleged murder plot against New York-based Sikh separatist movement leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, whom the Indian government has designated a terrorist. Pannun leads Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), which aims to establish an independent state called Khalistan. US federal prosecutors linked an Indian official to the foiled assassination attempt in an indictment in November last year. They also charged Nikhil Gupta, a New Delhi businessman, with trying to hire someone to carry out the murder.
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