Sushma Swaraj in New York to attend UN General Assembly meet

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj arrive here today to represent India at the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) session with a packed schedule of super diplomacy among an array of world leaders.

During her week-long stay, Swaraj, leading a high-powered Indian delegation, is expected to hold about 20 bilateral and trilateral meetings with leaders attending the session.

Swaraj, was received at the airport by the Indian Ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna, and India’s permanent Representative to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin.

She would kick off her official engagement later today with a trilateral meeting with her American and Japanese counterparts Rex Tillerson, and Taro Konorespectively.

Aimed at lending momentum to cooperation between the three countries, the meeting also turns significant amid China flexing its muscles in the region.

In a day jam-packed with consecutive meetings, Swaraj will also participate in a high-level meeting on UN reforms, hosted by the US and chaired by president Donald Trump.

India is among the 120 countries who have supported the reform efforts of the UN Secretary General.

India has said that the UN reforms need to be “broad- based and all-encompassing” and the changes should not be restricted to its Secretariat only.

In a preview of the Swaraj’s engagements during her week-long stay in the US, Akbaruddin had said that issues of climate change, terrorism, people centric migration and peacekeeping are other key focus areas for India this year.

Swaraj will also participate in a special panel of selected countries by the UN Secretary General on climate action, he said earlier. She will address the UNGA onSeptember 23.

The minister is scheduled to have a series of meetings today including that with Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui, Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics and her Bolivian counterpart Fernando Huanacuni Mamani.

Sushma Swaraj Among Foreign Policy’s 15 Global Thinkers List

India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has been included in Foreign Policy magazine’s 2016 list of 15 Global Thinkers “for fashioning a novel brand of Twitter diplomacy”. In a website posting, the magazine recalled how, when around 10,000 Indian workers in Saudi Arabia faced a “food crisis” earlier this year due to job losses, Sushma Swaraj tweeted about the issue to six million followers on the social media website.

“What followed was a weeks-long social media operation in which Swaraj posted information for migrants about rations provided by the Indian embassy, claims for unpaid wages, and government-organized transportation home,” it said.

Stating that this was not the first time that Sushma Swaraj used the internet to reach out to people abroad, the posting said: “From evacuating Indians from Yemen to helping replace lost passports, Swaraj has earned the nickname ‘the common tweeple’s leader’ for her aggressive use of Twitter.”

Swaraj was named in the ‘decision makers’ category along with the Democratic Party US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, German chancellor Angela Merkel and US attorney general Loretta Lynch among others. “Very proud to see our hardworking EAM @SushmaSwaraj part of the @ForeignPolicy Global Thinkers list 2016! Congrats,” PM Narendra Modi tweeted.

The magazine recalled how, when around 10,000 Indian workers in Saudi Arabia faced a “food crisis” earlier this year due to job losses, Swaraj tweeted about the issue to six million followers on the social media website. Sushma Swaraj is currently recuperating from a kidney transplant operation at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

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