Washington, June 8 (IANS) The United States says President Barack Obama is looking forward to ‘ambitious results’ from his India visit as he sees relations with India ‘as one of the most consequential and indispensable.’
The Obama visit to India in November will also highlight the ‘unprecedented new levels of cooperation’ to which US-India relations had been taken by their strategic dialogue last week, US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Robert Blake told reporters Monday.
‘What we’re starting to work on right now, is the details of what the president’s visit will entail, what will be the key areas of strategic focus, where will he visit, and all of these many important questions,’ he said when asked about the expected outcome of the visit.
‘But I can tell you that the president himself is looking forward to ambitious results and again sees our relations with India as one of the most consequential and indispensable of our partnerships in the world of the 21st century,’ Blake said. ‘So we are going to develop a schedule and a series of results to match that.’
‘How can the US and India intensify our already-wide cooperation to focus on how to deliver results that will make a difference in the lives of the people of the United States, of India and of the wider world?’ That was the common theme underlying discussions, he said citing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The two sides had also discussed a wide range of steps the two governments can take, to ensure that innovation is a source of growth and dynamism for our two knowledge economies.
The US, Blake said also plans to send a high-level delegation of high- tech and other innovation entrepreneurs to Delhi in autumn, ‘to develop new partnerships and initiatives in this area, in advance of President Obama’s visit,’ he said.
Referring to ‘a very sparkling visit by our president’ to the State Department to honour External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and his delegation, Blake noted how Obama had ’emphasised that our partnership with India is one of his highest strategic priorities.
‘In sum, as the president says, the United States sees India as an indispensable partner as we move forward in the 21st century.’
‘And the strategic dialogue that we initiated last week took US-India relations to unprecedented new levels of cooperation that will be highlighted during the president’s visit in November.’
Asked about concrete results from the dialogue, Blake said: ‘ The focus was really, for the first time, to have a strategic dialogue in which we would get large numbers of cabinet-level secretaries and ministers and their deputies together to think strategically about how to move our partnership ahead in the 21st century. And that’s exactly what we accomplished.
‘Again the idea was to have everybody talk to each other and to eliminate some of the stovepipes that exist and to have kind of this cross-fertilisation of ideas,’ he said. ‘So we think this was a very positive and encouraging first strategic dialogue between our two countries.’
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
