US Secretary of State John Kerry was to leave late Friday for India on his first foreign trip of 2015, with a heavy focus on trade and investment with the South Asian economic giant. His tour will also take him to Geneva for talks Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart on Iran's nuclear program, before he makes his first visit as the top US diplomat to Bulgaria later in the week.
It will be Kerry's second trip to India in six months, as the two allies have worked to repair ties which frayed badly early last year in a spat over the deportation of an Indian diplomat. He will also be paving the way for a visit to South Asian nation by President Barack Obama later this month who will be the country's special guest for the Republic Day celebrations.
En route for India, Kerry will stopover for a few hours in Munich, southern Germany, to meet with Oman's Sultan Qaboos. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Munich talks would be more of "a personal visit" although she acknowledged that Oman played a key role in hosting secret talks in 2012 between Iran and the US credited with bringing the Islamic Republic back to the nuclear negotiations.
The key focus of Kerry's visit to the western Indian city of Ahmadabad will be his address to the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit hosted by new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is the first time that the United States is joining the conference as a partner country - a biennial summit first launched in 2003 to attract foreign investment to the area bordering Pakistan.