Obama Plans November Trip to `Rising Power' India
U.S. President Barack Obama
Ron Sachs/Pool via Bloomberg
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, speaks at a reception in honor of India's External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna, at the State Department in Washington.
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, speaks at a reception in honor of India's External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna, at the State Department in Washington. Photographer: Ron Sachs/Pool via Bloomberg
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right, listen to India's External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna during a reception in the minister's honor, at the State Department in Washington. Photographer: Ron Sachs/Pool via Bloomberg
President Barack Obama said he will visit India in early November as he works to deepen U.S. ties with the Indian government on issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to trade.
Obama, speaking at a reception in Washington for the visiting Indian delegation led by Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, said yesterday that India is “indispensable” to the future the U.S. seeks.
India is “a rising power and a responsible global power,” Obama said at the State Department. He described the nation as one of the “21st century centers of influence.”
Krishna and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who joined Obama at the event, are leading the inaugural set of strategic talks on relations between the world’s two largest democracies.
The so-called strategic dialogue will also encompass agriculture, education and environmental and clean-energy technologies, an area where Krishna said the U.S. and India should collaborate.
Krishna praised a decision to deepen cooperation on trade and moves to liberalize U.S. export controls that apply to India. In 2009, $66 billion in trade flowed between the U.S. and India, more than 10 times the trade level in 1990.
“India’s rise is a defining storyline of the early 21st century,” Clinton said as she began the talks with Krishna yesterday.
The nation’s rise required the U.S. to reassess global governance institutions and “will certainly be a factor in any future consideration of reform of the United Nations Security Council,” Clinton said.
Logical Step
The opening session of the talks touched on the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008, with Krishna saying it would be a “logical next step” for the U.S. to allow India access to individuals detained in connection with the assault.
Krishna also pledged to continue Indian support for development in Afghanistan, where Obama is widening U.S. military involvement in an attempt to weaken the Taliban and bolster the elected government.
The U.S. and India work closely on counter-terrorism measures, Clinton said. She said they would work to better share intelligence, train first responders and increase military cooperation.
The U.S. military holds more joint exercises with India’s armed forces than with any other military in the world, Clinton said. She said that both nations agreed that service-level exchanges, security dialogues and technology transfer should be further strengthened.
The two sides also recognized “the scope for enhancement of defense trade between both countries to the mutual benefit of both sides,” according to a State Department fact sheet.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.
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