UK PM Boris Johnson accepts India's invite to be chief guest at Republic Day celebrations

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “very generous invitation” to attend nation’s Republic Day celebration, said British Foreign secretary Dominic Raab on December 15 following the bilateral talks with Minister of External Affairs Dr S Jaishankar at New Delhi. In a joint conference after the meet, Raab confirmed Johnson’s presence in India’s celebration on January 26, 2021, and being the Republic Day Chief Guest. He also denoted it as a “great honour”. 

"UK PM Johnson has also accepted the very generous invitation to attend India's Republic Day celebrations in January, which is a great honour,” said UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

Moreover, Johnson also extended invite for PM Modi to join the UK-hosted G7 Summit next year. This year, the G7 grouping will also witness an expansion and would include ten democracies across the globe. While the United States had proposed calling the summit in 2021 as ‘G7+4’, the host UK wants G7+3 and is calling the summit D10 meaning, 10 Democracies excluding Russia. Apart from the G7 nations, Britain has proposed a new alliance of ten Democracies including India, South Korea and Australia with a motive to hamper China’s monopoly on 5G technology. 

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‘Take our ties to a higher’ says Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the focus on the bilateral meeting was on how “to take our ties to a higher level”. After his talks with Raab, EAM informed about the five broad themes in the UK-India discussion including connecting people, trade and prosperity, defence & security, climate change and health. Additionally, British Foreign secretary and Jaishankar reviewed the situation in Afghanistan, Indo-Pacific along with the developments in the Middle East. Further, both talked about the challenges due to terrorism and the concerns budding from the same. 

“The focus has been on how to take our ties to a higher level. We focused on 5 broad themes- connecting people, trade and prosperity, defence & security, climate change and health,” said EAM Dr S Jaishankar on talks with UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

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