NEW YORK — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had said that he was going to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit here but they did not meet.
PM Modi’s brief trip was of about 55 hours packed with activities, while Trump was in the heat of the campaign for an election six weeks away.
The PM was busy on Saturday with the Quad summit with President Joe Biden, and Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia and Fumio Kishida of Japan.
Monday was taken up entirely by PM Modi’s address to the Summit of the Future and meetings with some leaders before his flight back.
On Sunday, he addressed the diaspora rally in a New York suburb, and he had some time later in the day for meetings.
But Trump was away holding his own rally in North Carolina.
Later Sunday, PM Modi met with Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas, Nepal's Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, and Kuwait Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid.
There were media speculations about another meeting: Between PM Modi and Mohammad Yunus, the de facto prime Minister of Bangladesh, on the sidelines of the United Nations Summit of the Future.
Some media reports said that PM Modi was snubbing him by refusing to meet.
Ultimately it was also a matter of timing.
Asked at his news conference about the meeting that wasn’t to be, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said, “The Prime Minister is leaving in a few minutes from now. The chief advisor of Bangladesh is not here yet, so there hasn't been any possibility of a meeting on this occasion”.
Touhid Hossain, the foreign affairs adviser in the interim government of Bangladesh, spoke at the summit on Monday instead of Yunus who was listed as the speaker.
After meeting Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and To Lam of Vietnam on Monday, PM Modi also squeezed in two other meetings, with the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Armenia’s President Nikol Pashinyan.