New Delhi: External affairs minister S. Jaishankar met US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Kuala Lumpur this morning (October 27) on the sidelines of the Asean and East Asia Summit, marking their second meeting in just over a month.Announcing the meeting, Jaishankar wrote on X, “Glad to meet @SecRubio this morning in Kuala Lumpur. Appreciated the discussion on our bilateral ties as well as regional and global issues.” Neither the Indian Ministry of External Affairs nor the US State Department issued any further details about the talks. This is their fourth in-person meeting this year.In the run-up to the meeting, Rubio said that while India may be “concerned for obvious reasons”, the US wanted to “deepen” its strategic partnership with Pakistan. Speaking to reporters on his way to Doha, Rubio added that Washington’s engagement with Islamabad did not come at the expense of its partnership with India, but asserted that the US was trying to expand its ties with Pakistan beyond cooperation in counter-terrorism.Rubio and Jaishankar had met in New York last month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. According to the US embassy readout, that discussion had covered bilateral cooperation in trade, defence and technology, as well as regional issues.The Kuala Lumpur meeting also came amid continuing friction between India and the US over trade-related issues and concerns over ties with Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the ASEAN and East Asia summits in Malaysia, a rare decision that opposition parties claimed was to avoid an encounter with US President Donald Trump.New Delhi has been watching from the sidelines as Washington has warmed up to Islamabad in Trump’s second term as President. In June, US President Donald Trump hosted Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, the first such meeting between a serving Pakistani general and a US president. It followed Trump’s claim of brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after hostilities triggered by India’s Operation Sindoor following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.Trump has since repeatedly taken credit for the truce, even suggesting he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. India has dismissed the claim, calling it only a brief pause in fighting at Pakistan’s request, not US mediation.Munir returned to the White House in September with Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, marking the first formal meeting between a Pakistan premier and US President in six years. At the Gaza peace summit in Egypt, Trump invited Sharif to speak and again floated the Nobel nomination.Note: This report will be updated as more information on the meetings come in.