Addressing a rally in Bhubaneswar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revealed why he declined US President Donald Trump's invite to visit Washington.
PM Modi said he chose to visit Odisha and hence had to decline Trump's invite. "Just two days ago, I was in Canada for the G7 summit and the US President Trump called me. He said, since you have come to Canada, go via Washington, we will have dinner together and talk. He extended the invitation with great insistence. I told the US President, thank you for the invitation. It is very important for me to go to the land of Mahaprabhu and hence I politely declined his invitation and your love and devotion to Mahaprabhu brought me to this land," he said.
Modi had on Tuesday declined Trump's invitation to visit the US while returning from Canada, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri informed in a statement on the Modi-Trump phone call. He instead invited Trump to visit India for the Quad Summit, likely later this year.
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Meanwhile, in an interview with ANI, Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said that Pakistan's PM not being invited for a meeting with US President Donald Trump is a 'very strange thing' for the country.
"I don't have any great opinion on this, but it's surprising. It must be an embarrassment to any country that the military chief gets invited and the prime minister is nowhere to be seen. It's a very strange thing," he said.
