Marco Rubio to visit India and Uzbekistan from Saturday on a 5-day trip

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio leaves on Saturday 17 October for a five-day trip to Uzbekistan and India, with stops in Samarkand, Mumbai and Jamnagar, the State Department said on Tuesday. The trip was reported by Reuters and carried by Business Recorder.

The itinerary

• Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Talks with officials from all five Central Asian states (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan). Rubio will lead a delegation of more than 200 US business leaders.
• Mumbai and Jamnagar, India. Meetings with Indian officials on regional and global issues and on "prospects for enhanced energy cooperation". Jamnagar in Gujarat is home to one of the world's largest oil refining complexes.

The strains in the background

The visit comes at a difficult moment for US-India relations, according to the Reuters report:

• Trade. Indian and US officials said earlier this month that efforts to finish a bilateral trade agreement had stalled again.
• Russian oil. New Delhi objects to US legislation that would let President Trump impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries that buy Russian energy. India cut its Russian purchases briefly early in 2026, then raised them again after the supply shock from the US-Israeli war on Iran.
• Pakistan. India has bristled at Trump's repeated claim that he brokered the India-Pakistan ceasefire.
• Seafarers. A US military attack on a ship off Oman killed three Indian seafarers.
• Voter rolls. The trip was announced during protests in India over the removal of 130 million voters from electoral rolls, on which Washington has not commented.

The Pakistan angle

Pakistan is not on the itinerary the State Department announced. The talks in Samarkand on Central Asian trade, and the energy talks in India, are the parts most likely to touch Pakistan's interests in the region.

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