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Narendra Modi has conveyed his inability to attend the summit citing Diwali celebrations at home.
(File photo)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not travel to Malaysia and instead will attend the ASEAN leaders’s summit virtually.
This was disclosed by Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim on Thursday, who received a phone call from PM Modi.
According to Ibrahim, Modi conveyed his inability to attend the summit citing Diwali celebrations at home.
Sources said that the Chhath festival on Oct 28 was cited as the reason, and its significance given the Bihar elections are upcoming.
This precludes any possible meeting between the two leaders, who were widely anticipated to meet on the sidelines of the summit in Kuala Lumpur.
But, this also means that since the trade deal negotiations is still ongoing, it was not possible for the PM to meet the President. Also, Trump’s repeated comments on the Russian oil import cut and his role in stopping India-Pakistan war had made the situation politically difficult for the Indian side.
Modi and Trump have spoken thrice on telephone in just over a month.
Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More
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