India and the US on Friday (May 28) promised to support each other amid the COVID-19 crisis in the second physical meet between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Both of them had met earlier this year in London on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting.
Jaishankar, standing alongside the US Secretary of State, said, “Our relations have grown strong over the years and I am very confident that it will continue to do so”, thanking the US for the “strong support and solidarity at the moment of great difficulty for us”.
Amid the second wave of the COVID crisis, the US sent assistance which included 20,000 courses of Remdesivir, 1,500 oxygen cylinders, nearly 550 mobile oxygen concentrators, 2.5 million N95 masks and a large-scale Deployable Oxygen Concentration System.
Blinken said the US and India are working jointly on many important challenges of “our time”. “We are united in confronting COVID-19 together,” he said.
“The partnership between the US and India is vital, strong, and I think it is increasingly productive,” Blinken added. Earlier in the day, Jaishankar met US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin during which they discussed further developing strategic and defence partnership between the two countries and exchanged views on “contemporary security challenges”.
“A warm meeting with US @SecDef Lloyd Austin. A comprehensive conversation about further developing our strategic and defence partnership,” he tweeted after the meeting, sharing a photograph of them together.
