United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday opened a visit to India that will include talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looking to renew ties with a usually like-minded partner a week after Washington\u2019s warm summit with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rubio, a devout Catholic, began his four-day, four-city tour by visiting the headquarters of Mother Teresa\u2019s charity in the eastern city of Kolkata and praying over her tomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wearing a yellow garland over his suit, Rubio, who was visiting India for the first time in his life, smiled before an assembly of nuns, all clad in the late humanitarian\u2019s signature white and blue saris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRubio spoke about aiding the homeless, terminally ill and those afflicted by leprosy,\u201d Sister Marie Juan of Missionaries of Charity told reporters after his hour-and-a-half-long visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was happy to pray and we were also happy to have him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sergio Gor, the US ambassador to India and also a Catholic, later posted that the visit showed that the countries\u2019 relationship was based \u201cnot only on strong policies, but also on shared values.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rubio, who is accompanied by his wife Jeanette, then flew to New Delhi, where he was scheduled to meet with Modi later on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before leaving on Tuesday, Rubio will also take part in a meeting of foreign ministers of the so-called Quad \u2014 Australia, India, Japan and the United States \u2014 four democracies seen as a counterweight to China\u2019s presence in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China has long been suspicious of the Quad, calling it an attempt to encircle it, and has chastised India in the past for taking part in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Rubio\u2019s trip comes as President Donald Trump is shaking up traditional assumptions about US priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump paid a state visit to China<\/a> last week, where he hailed<\/a> the reception he received from President Xi Jinping despite limited concrete announcements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump in Beijing spoke of the United States and China being a \u201cG2\u201d \u2014 a formulation that had fallen out of favour in recent years as US allies fear being shut out of Washington\u2019s dealings with a rising China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Trump rarely raises human rights, some elements of his base have expressed concerns<\/a> over the treatment of Christians under the Hindu nationalist Modi, making Rubio\u2019s choice of first stop highly symbolic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rights groups say there has been a rise in attacks on minority Christians across India, including vandalism of churches, since Modi came to power in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The government rejects the claims as exaggerated and politically motivated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ahead of the trip, Rubio called India a \u201cgreat ally, great partner\u201d and said the US would be looking to find ways to sell it more oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India\u2019s fast-growing economy is reliant on energy imports and, like many countries, has been rattled<\/a> by the US-Israeli attack on Iran, which retaliated by choking off the strategic Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices soaring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India has historic ties with Iran but also a growing relationship with Israel, which Modi visited<\/a> just days before the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the conflict has also seen the re-emergence as a key US partner of India\u2019s traditional adversary Pakistan, which has positioned itself as a mediator<\/a>, with its powerful army chief flying to Tehran<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States was a Cold War partner of Pakistan but increasingly took a distance as it prioritised relations with India, seeing the world\u2019s largest democracy as a natural partner in a global order marked by China\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has turned away from long-held assumptions and warmed to Pakistan, which has lavished him with praise over his diplomacy<\/a> in its short conflict with India last year, and has welcomed a cryptocurrency firm owned by the US president\u2019s family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Modi irritated Trump<\/a> by not crediting him with ending the conflict, in which India struck Pakistan following the Pahalgam attack in India-occupied Kashmir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump imposed punitive tariffs<\/a> on India shortly afterwards, at rates higher than he had put on China, but they were eased under a trade deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday opened a visit to India that will include talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looking to renew ties with a usually like-minded partner a week after Washington\u2019s warm summit with China. Rubio, a devout Catholic, began his four-day, four-city tour by visiting the headquarters of Mother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","inline_featured_image":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[{"account":"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440","service":"facebook","timestamp":1779521612,"status":"success"}],"rop_publish_now_status":"done","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21756,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754\/revisions\/21756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Eye on energy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n