Jaishankar, Blinken discuss Afghanistan, Quad

The foreign ministers of India and the US held wide-ranging talks and discussed ways to deepen cooperation in Afghanistan and to bolster the Quad.External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on July 8 discussed agenda for a host of high-profile India-US interactions, including the 2+2 talks between the foreign and defence ministers of India and the US and the Quad meeting of foreign ministers.Both engagements are likely to take place in September this year.Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit the US later this year for a bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden as well as the first in-person Quad summit. President Biden is looking forward to hosting the first in-person Quad summit in the US later this year, with the overarching objective of promoting the Quad as a fulcrum of stability in then conflicted region. The talks in New Delhi also focussed on operationalizing the Quad vaccine which entails distributing 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the Indo-Pacific region by the end of 2022.