Trump foresees a ‘big, fat hug’ from China’s Xi Jinping as New Delhi mulls a face-saver Quad meet-up without the US president in attendance
After India’s 2025 term as the Quad’s rotating chair ended without a leaders’ summit, New Delhi is planning to host a foreign ministers’ meeting that could be framed as a leaders-level discussion, even if the top leaders do not attend, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The move is seen as a way to ease India’s ruffled feathers on several counts.
“It’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig,” said Sourabh Gupta of the Institute for China-America Studies, a think tank in Washington.
“The outcomes in practice will not be worth the paper on which they are written,” he added, calling it “more farce than tragedy”.
