Amid the ongoing diplomatic standoff between India and Canada, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. While the agenda for the meeting has not been disclosed by either sides, the latest diplomatic tensions over the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar is expected to come up during the talks.
“I don’t want to preview the conversations he (Blinken) will have in that meeting (with Jaishankar) , but as we’ve made clear, we’ve raised this; we have engaged with our Indian counterparts on this and encouraged them to cooperate with the Canadian investigation, and we continue to encourage them to cooperate,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
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US has been urging India to cooperate in the Canadian investigation of the killing of the Khalistani terrorist. Ever since Trudeau alleged a potential link between the Indian government and the killing of Nijjar, multiple reports have surfaced that indicated that the United States had helped the Canadian government with intelligence regarding the same.
The US intelligence shared with Canada provided the "context" to the Canadian investigators and came after the death, a New York Times Report said.
Meanwhile, US officials said that the issue did not come up for discussion in New York during the Quad ministerial that involved foreign ministers of the US, India, Japan and Australia. “It was a meeting of a number of countries and it did not come up in that meeting. But we have engaged with our Indian counterparts on this issue and urged them to fully cooperate with the Canadian investigation,” the State Department spokesperson said.
