A year and a half after Britain led the international community in ending the boycott of Narendra Modi, British Foreign Secretary William Hague will be visiting India next week and meet the Prime Minister, in what would be London’s first engagement with the new government. Hague, who will be in Delhi for two days starting June 8, will hold talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. The priorities from the British side will be to expand trade and investment, enhance education links, strengthen co-operation on defence and security, increase collaboration on science and innovation, and build people-to-people links through the UK’s 1.5 million Indian diaspora. “We do give great importance to trade and investment with India, and we are making good progress towards doubling bilateral trade by 2015.climate change is a very important issue. Our relationship with India is such that we need to discuss all global issues together, and that absolutely will include climate change. “India will have a big role to play over the next 18 months in crucial climate change negotiations, so that will be on the agenda for our visit as well,” the foreign secretary had told British Parliament on June 17. The British government had ended the boycott of Modi in October 2012 — just ahead of the Gujarat elections — and the British High Commissioner James Bevan travelled to Gandhinagar to meet him. The UK envoy’s meeting with Modi had broken the consensus among the European envoys in Delhi to not engage with then Gujarat Chief Minister for 10 years over the 2002 Gujarat riots. Soon, European Union followed suit and hosted Modi for a lunch meeting in January nest year. The British government’s step also paved the way for the US decision to re-engage with Modi early this year.
