New Delhi: The 2+2 strategic dialogue, which was deferred earlier this month, is expected to take place in September, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.
"The 2+2 dialogue with the US is to happen in the first week of September. The agenda will be to develop and strengthen strategic defence cooperation and to follow-on with what had transpired during the meeting with US defence secretary Jim Matti," Sitharaman told reporters.
The first India-US strategic 2+2 Dialogue was postponed earlier as the summit between US president Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladmir Putin took centrestage.
The 2+2 Dialogue involving external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and their US counterparts Mike Pompeo and James Mattis was initially scheduled for July 6. It would be too close to the likely summit date, that can be scheduled immediately before or after the NATO summit in Brussels on July 11 and 12, and Trump's British visit, July 13-16.
The 2+2 Dialogue format was agreed to between the two sides during Modi's visit to Washington in June 2017 when he met Trump for the first time.
The dialogue is being looked at as a centrepiece of the growing ties between India and the US which Washington wants to scale up by extending the strategic vision from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean.
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