After some back and forth, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s visit has been cancelled due to the continuing proliferation of COVID-19, defence and diplomatic sources confirmed.
“The decision to cancel the visit came on Tuesday,” an official source said on Wednesday. Mr. Esper was scheduled to visit New Delhi on March 15 and 16. At a coordination meeting on Monday with the U.S. embassy, the Defence Ministry started working on the protocol and finalising the modalities.
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Mr. Esper must have got a new risk appraisal of all the issues he has to deal with when he came to work on Monday morning (U.S. time), a diplomatic source said on the change in the schedule.
Staff and security are deployed well in advance of the visit and the last-minute cancellation is only a testament to how strongly our Secretary of Defense really wanted to make the trip happen, the source added.
The visit was lined up close after the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump early this month. Mr. Esper was to hold discussions with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh and review the decisions taken during Mr. Trump’s and other recent visits.
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This is the latest in a series of cancellations of high-profile visits and engagements due to COVID-19 spreading across the globe. Recently, the largest multilateral exercise Milan-2020 hosted by the Navy to be held from March 18 to 28 in Visakhapatnam was indefinitely postponed as a precaution.
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The India-U.S. Military Cooperation Group (MCG) dialogue also scheduled for later this month has been cancelled. Official sources said the India Egypt Joint Special Forces exercise 2020, scheduled to be held at Jodhpur from March 11 to 13, has also been postponed.
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