Washington, DC – The United States on Monday confirmed to IAT that the September 6 meeting in Delhi, termed 2+2 Dialogue, is on schedule and any reports to the contrary are “false.”
Answering a query from IAT, Nolen Johnson, Press Officer, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs – US Department of State said in an email: “There has been no change to the 2+2 schedule or participants which was announced in July.”
Earlier a source in Washington had told IAT that there was scrambling to find a “valid” reason to reschedule the diplomatic event, or at least get it curtailed to 1+1 or participation to lower level officials.
On September 6, at the rescheduled event, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Defense Secretary James Mattis are to travel to India for the dialogue with their counterparts Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Defense Nirmala Sitharaman respectively.
The strategic top-level talks, agreed upon by US President Donald J Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June last year at the White House meeting, were put off by the US twice since then, and another reschedule is being talked about in Washington circles but the US State Department today put the murmurs to rest, calling them “false.”