US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in India on Saturday for a visit that includes talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as Washington seeks to strengthen ties with a key partner following President Donald Trump’s summit with China the previous week.

Rubio started his four-day, four-city visit in Kolkata, where he toured the headquarters of Missionaries of Charity and prayed at Mother Teresa’s tomb, News.Az reports, citing EasternEye.

Wearing a yellow garland over his suit, Rubio, visiting India for the first time, smiled before an assembly of nuns dressed in the late humanitarian’s white and blue saris.

“Rubio spoke about aiding the homeless, terminally ill and those afflicted by leprosy,” Sister Marie Juan of Missionaries of Charity told reporters after his hour-and-a-half-long visit.

“He was happy to pray and we were also happy to have him,” she said.

Sergio Gor, the US ambassador to India and also a Catholic, later posted that the visit showed the relationship between the two countries was based “not only on strong policies, but also on shared values”.

Rubio, accompanied by his wife Jeanette, later flew to New Delhi where he was scheduled to meet Modi on Saturday.

Before leaving on Tuesday, Rubio will also attend a meeting of foreign ministers from the Quad — Australia, India, Japan and the United States — four democracies seen as a counterweight to China’s presence in the Indian Ocean.

China has long viewed the Quad with suspicion, calling it an attempt to encircle the country, and has criticised India in the past for participating in it.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli