New York, March 12 (IANS) US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard will be the first cabinet official to visit India. Her meetings will follow up on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and President Donald Trump’s commitment to enhance intelligence sharing.
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who stopped at the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command (PACOM) on Tuesday in the first leg of her trip, will meet with Indian leaders and officials.
Next week, she will participate in the geopolitical security conference, Raisina Dialogue, in New Delhi, to which PM Modi invited her when they met in Washington last month.
Before leaving Washington, she said in an X post that her trip’s objective was “building strong relationships, understanding, and open lines of communication are vital to achieving President Trump’s objectives of peace, freedom and prosperity”.
Her trip also includes stops in Japan, Thailand, and France.
When PM Modi arrived in Washington last month to meet Trump, his first official meeting was with Gabbard, and he posted on X: “Discussed various aspects of the India-USA friendship, of which she’s always been a strong votary”.
External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal expanded on it in his post, “Discussions focused on enhancing intelligence cooperation in counterterrorism, cybersecurity & emerging threats”.
In their joint statement, PM Modi and Trump said they “committed to breaking new ground to support and sustain the overseas deployments of the US and Indian militaries in the Indo-Pacific, including enhanced logistics and intelligence sharing”.
While she was a member of the House of Representatives, Gabbar advocated strongly for building closer ties with India.
The DNI is the head of the US Intelligence Community, comprising intelligence agencies and the intelligence functions of departments and military services, and manages the National Intelligence Program.
Gabbard is a Hindu by religion, although ethnically of Samoan and Irish descent.
Even while she was in Congress, she served in the Army Reserves with the rank of lieutenant colonel and is a decorated combat veteran who had been deployed to Iraq.
She was elected to Congress as a member of the Democratic Party and ran unsuccessfully for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020.
She joined the Republican Party and endorsed Trump last year.
–IANS
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