Rio de Janeiro, Nov 19: Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a farewell meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit with US President Joe Biden, who is completing his term in January, capping four years of cooperation.

“Always a delight to meet him”, PM Modi posted on X with a picture of them together.

At the G20 conference table, PM Modi was flanked by Biden and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

PM Modi developed a rapport with Biden and relations grew between the two democracies in the four years of his presidency during which they met personally several times.

In September, PM Modi met Biden at his weekend home in Delaware, where they also held a summit of the Quad with the prime ministers of Australia and Japan.

Biden visited India last year for the G20 summit hosted by PM Modi, during which they also held bilateral meetings.

Biden hosted PM Modi on a state visit to Washington last year showcasing pageantry, and said of PM Modi, “Each time, I was struck by our ability to find new areas of cooperation. Together, we’re unlocking a shared future of what I believe to be unlimited potential”.

During the visit, the two countries signed agreements for cooperation in defence, climate change, space, and high tech.

Significantly, the US agreed to licence to India the manufacture of GE F414 engines used in military jets, and the two countries agreed to promote startups in defence industries and to cooperate in counter-terrorism.

PM Modi and Biden upgraded the Quad, the group for Indo-Pacific cooperation comprising also Japan and Australia, to the summit level.

They also set up the I2U2 group of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States to mirror the Quad on the western side of India.

PM Modi visited Washington in 2021 and had other meetings with Biden in multinational forums and held several phone conversations.

While there were differences between the two countries manifest mainly on Ukraine, that did not come in the way of the Biden administration’s ties with New Delhi.

The spectre of China’s threat to the world order and to the Indo-Pacific has been one of the drivers of closer ties between India and the US, an organic growth through successive US administrations with bipartisan support in both countries.

--IANS

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