New York: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in New York on Thursday for a five-day visit to the United States during which he will address world leaders at a landmark UN sustainable development summit and interact with top CEOs and the Indian diaspora in the Silicon Valley.
The Prime Minister was received at the airport by Indian Ambassador Arun K Singh, India's envoy to the UN Asoke Mukerji, Consul General Dnyaneshwar Mulay and their spouses. "A packed schedule awaits in the BIg Apple. PM @narendramodi arrives in New York on the first part of his US visit," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted soon after Modi's plane touched down at the JFK International Airport.
Modi is staying at the prestigious Waldorf Tower hotel in New York. Coincidently, he will be sharing the hotel with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. However, no bilateral talks between the two leaders has been planned yet. "There is no deliberate attempt to avoid PM Modi & Pak PM's paths to cross. But no bilateral meet is planned," Vikas Swarup said.
Modi will have a packed agenda for the next two days in New York and then in California from September 26-27. He will return to New York on September 28 for a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama as well as to attend a high-level peacekeeping summit at the United Nations.
On Friday, he will address global heads of state at the Sustainable Development Summit hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when the new and ambitious post-2015 development agenda will be adopted.
India will also host the G-4 summit on September 26, before Modi leaves for the West Coast where he will have meetings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google's new CEO Sundar Pichai. He will also attend a grand community reception in San Jose.
Modi will also meet President Barack Obama on September 28, his third summit meeting with the President in about a year.
Modi is expected to focus on giving a further push to early and urgent reform of the Security Council and to send an "unambiguous message" of "zero tolerance against terrorism". In a letter to the UN Secretary General in July, Modi had said that that the UN must be made more effective for dealing with new security challenges as "we are now living in an era when non-state military actors are a major factor."
"We must use this historic year to jointly send an unambiguous message of zero tolerance against terrorism. An important step in this direction would be adopting the Comprehensive Convention against International Terrorism at the United Nations this year," Modi had written in the letter.
India's Permanent Representative to the UN Asoke Mukerji has said that the Prime Minister's speech at the Sustainable Development summit will focus on "Agenda 2030" since he "has given a lot of attention to the substance of the development agenda."
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