Indo-US ties will pick up where we left off, Biden no stranger: Jaishankar

 Jaishankar said President-elect Biden is “not a stranger” to India or to the relationship between the two countries

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday exuded confidence that ties between India and the US will expand further under Joe Biden’s administration, noting that he was part of the period when bilateral relations underwent a radical transformation. “As vice president, we dealt with him. I happened to be the ambassador during the last phase of the Obama administration. We’d known him earlier when he was in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the ranking Democratic member and then as the chairman,” Jaishankar said.

The external affairs minister was speaking at an online discussion organised by leading think-tank Gateway House. “He (Biden) is very much part of this period when Indo-American relations underwent a radical transformation, which I reasonably date back to (Bill) Clinton’s visit,” Jaishankar said. Jaishankar said President-elect Biden is not a stranger” to India or to the relationship between the two countries.

“I am very confident that we will pick up where we left off, we have done that over the last four administrations. “I think that will be the case as well here and I also say that because within the American politics, it’s not just that we deal with the administration of the day, we also tend to deal with the Congress,” Jaishankar said. “American politics by its nature has very strong elements of bipartisanship,” he said..