Roving Periscope: PM Modi refuses to fall in Trump’s traps; to skip UNGA meet in NY
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: For the first time since he became the Prime Minister in 2014, Narendra Modi will skip an important meeting in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York this month, maybe because he has once again seen through the ‘trap’ laid for him by his frenemy, US President Donald Trump.
Instead, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will represent India at the high-level UNGA session from September 23 to 29, the media reported.
Recently, a German media outlet reported that PM Modi avoided taking Trump’s calls at least four times since the Operation Sindoor, lest the US President, as is his wont, twist this potential conversation to suit his ends.
PM Modi had a reason to do so.
In June, the US President suddenly returned home from the ongoing G-7 Summit in Canada, and invited the PM to stop over in Washington, where Pakistan’s “Field Marshal” Asim Munir was waiting for lunch. Apparently, Trump wanted to play the direct peacemaker between India and Pakistan. The PM politely declined his offer.
Clearly, a careful PM Modi is avoiding such Trump ‘traps.’
On his part, the US President and his acolytes are using a carrots-and-sticks policy, threatening, praising, cajoling India, to somehow woo PM Modi back to their fold.
On Friday also, what looked like a reconciliatory gesture towards India, Trump said; “I’ll always be friends with Modi… He’s a great Prime Minister. He’s great. But I just don’t like what he’s doing at this particular moment. But India and the United States have a special relationship. There’s nothing to worry about. We just have moments on occasion,” Trump told reporters at his Oval Office on Friday, when asked if he wanted to improve ties with India which seemed to be going through an extremely rough patch.
Earlier on Friday, the same Trump had lamented on his social media platform Truth Social that the US had lost India and Russia to China.
However, responding positively to his fresh gesture of ‘friendship,’ PM Modi wrote on X: “Deeply appreciate and fully reciprocate President Trump’s sentiments and positive assessment of our ties. India and the US have a very positive and forward-looking Comprehensive and Global Strategic Partnership.”
On Friday itself, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick lashed out at India: “It is all bravado because you think it feels good to fight with the biggest client in the world. But eventually your businesses are going to say you’ve got to stop this and go and make a deal with America. Because I think, in a month or two months, India is going to be at the table and they are going to say they are ‘sorry’ and try to make a deal with Donald Trump. And it will be on Donald Trump’s desk how he wants to deal with Modi, we leave that to him. That is why he is the president,” Lutnick said.
The 50 percent US tariffs may impact an estimated annual USD 60 billion worth of Indian exports to America, affecting many labour-intensive sectors such as textiles, leather and jewellery. Irritated at New Delhi’s silence, Washington also postponed the visit of its trade team to India on August 25, to take forward the India-US bilateral trade agreement talks.
India is now waiting for the US to make the next gesture to take the talks ahead so that an outcome can be reached by November-end.
It is in this backdrop that PM Modi will skip the General Debate at the annual high-level session of the UNGA later this month. Apparently, he will not face Trump without concrete proposals between the two sides.
The 80th session of the UNGA will open on September 9. The high-level General Debate will run from September 23 to 29, with Brazil as the traditional first speaker of the session, followed by the US. President Donald Trump will address world leaders on September 23, his first address to the UN session in his second term in the White House.
According to a revised provisional list of speakers for the session, EAM S Jaishankar will address the session on September 27. Earlier, PM Modi was scheduled to address it on September 26.
The heads of government of Israel, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are scheduled to address the UNGA General Debate on September 26.
PM Modi had travelled to the US in February this year for a bilateral meeting with Trump at the White House in Washington.
