Kashmir Impulse Desk
Srinagar, Aug 18
A team of US diplomats met National Conference (NC) President Farooq Abdullah in Srinagar on Tuesday, a day before US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor was due to make his first visit to Jammu and Kashmir since taking office.
The diplomats from the US embassy in New Delhi reached Kashmir ahead of schedule as part of preparations for Gor’s visit and met Abdullah at his residence.
The team included Ian Michael Dick, Gary Applegarth, Lisa Grace Alkins, and Hemant Joshi.
The meeting focused on Gor’s planned engagement with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, sources said.
Gor, who is also the US special envoy for South and Central Asia, is scheduled to arrive in Srinagar on Wednesday afternoon.
He is expected to meet Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah separately before spending the night in Srinagar and travelling to Ladakh on Thursday.
The visit will be Gor’s first to Jammu and Kashmir since he became the 27th US ambassador to India in January.
It is also the first visit by a serving US ambassador to the region since J&K was reorganised as a centrally governed union territory in 2019.
An advance team from Gor’s office had already reached Srinagar to finalise logistical and security arrangements.
The visit comes as India and the US deepen their strategic partnership and follows recent high-level discussions between Gor and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on issues including counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics.
J&K’s political leadership and civil society have taken note of the visit, with some calling for the ambassador to meet a broader cross-section of people during his short stay.
Gor’s meeting with CM Omar will be the first between a serving US ambassador and a sitting J&K chief minister in more than 15 years.
The last such meeting took place in March 2011, when then-US Ambassador Timothy Roemer met Omar, who was chief minister when J&K was still a state.
The proposed meeting as such marks a return to direct engagement between the US ambassador and the region’s elected government after the chief ministerial terms that followed Omar’s first tenure.
The last US ambassador to visit J&K was Donald Blome in 2022, when he was ambassador to Pakistan.
His visit to Kashmir on the other side of the Line of Control (LoC) prompted a strong protest from New Delhi.
The last standalone visit to Kashmir by a US ambassador based in New Delhi was by Kenneth Juster in August 2018, shortly after the collapse of the PDP-BJP government.
Juster met then Governor Narinder Nath Vohra and Omar Abdullah and also visited Ladakh a month earlier.
Juster returned to Srinagar in January 2020 as part of a 15-member ambassadorial delegation organised by New Delhi following the 2019 reorganisation of J&K.
Gor’s visit to Kashmir and Ladakh follows his recent engagements with political leaders in Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra.
