Clinton touts prospects for better ties with India
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
NEW DELHI, July 20 (Agencies): US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton touted Monday prospects for strengthening US-India relations and prepared to sign at least one agreement designed to give US companies more access to India's expanding markets.
"We want to broaden and deepen our strategic understanding" and find more common ground with India, Clinton told an audience of several hundred students and faculty members at Delhi University. She said she would announce later Monday a more comprehensive approach to US-India relations, to include talks on energy security, agriculture reform, education and counterterrorism.
Clinton later met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and was to hold separate talks with Foreign Minister SM Krishna to discuss forging a more productive partnership between two countries still struggling to overcome profound distrust rooted in Cold War rivalries. The Obama administration regards India as an emerging world power and a key to turning the tide against violent Islamic extremism.
"We have to get to the real meat of the matter, and our cooperation will do that for us," she told her university audience.
Clinton's trip, which began with a two-day visit to Mumbai, reflects a push by the Obama administration to keep US-India relations on the improving path they have followed for more than a decade. For example, two-way trade has doubled since 2004.
On Sunday, India stood firm against Western demands that it accept binding limits on carbon emissions even as Clinton expressed optimism about an eventual climate change deal to India's benefit.
Clinton said Ramesh presented a "fair argument." But she said India's case "loses force" because the fast-growing country's absolute level of carbon emissions - as opposed to the per capita amount - is "going up, and dramatically."
Later, at an agricultural research site in a farm field outside the capital, Clinton told reporters she is optimistic about getting a climate change deal that will satisfy India.
Meanwhile, the United States and India are expected to sign an agreement Monday that would take a major step toward allowing the sale of sophisticated US arms to the South Asian nation, three senior US officials said.
Known as an "end-use monitoring" agreement and required by US law for such weapons sales, the pact would let Washington check that India was using any arms for the purposes intended and preventing the technology from leaking to others.
The deal would be a tangible accomplishment of Hillary Clinton's first trip to India as US secretary of state and it could prove a boon to US companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
Both US defence contractors are in the running to compete for India's plan to buy 126 multi-role fighters, which would be one of the largest arms deals in the world as India takes steps to modernise its largely Russian-made arsenal.
The two US companies are competing with Russia's MiG-35, France's Dassault Rafale, Sweden's Saab KAS-39 Gripen and the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish firms, for the contract.
The US officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said the defence agreement was not finalised as of late Sunday but that they expected it to go through in time for Clinton's signature Monday.
"We want to broaden and deepen our strategic understanding" and find more common ground with India, Clinton told an audience of several hundred students and faculty members at Delhi University. She said she would announce later Monday a more comprehensive approach to US-India relations, to include talks on energy security, agriculture reform, education and counterterrorism.
Clinton later met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and was to hold separate talks with Foreign Minister SM Krishna to discuss forging a more productive partnership between two countries still struggling to overcome profound distrust rooted in Cold War rivalries. The Obama administration regards India as an emerging world power and a key to turning the tide against violent Islamic extremism.
"We have to get to the real meat of the matter, and our cooperation will do that for us," she told her university audience.
Clinton's trip, which began with a two-day visit to Mumbai, reflects a push by the Obama administration to keep US-India relations on the improving path they have followed for more than a decade. For example, two-way trade has doubled since 2004.
On Sunday, India stood firm against Western demands that it accept binding limits on carbon emissions even as Clinton expressed optimism about an eventual climate change deal to India's benefit.
Clinton said Ramesh presented a "fair argument." But she said India's case "loses force" because the fast-growing country's absolute level of carbon emissions - as opposed to the per capita amount - is "going up, and dramatically."
Later, at an agricultural research site in a farm field outside the capital, Clinton told reporters she is optimistic about getting a climate change deal that will satisfy India.
Meanwhile, the United States and India are expected to sign an agreement Monday that would take a major step toward allowing the sale of sophisticated US arms to the South Asian nation, three senior US officials said.
Known as an "end-use monitoring" agreement and required by US law for such weapons sales, the pact would let Washington check that India was using any arms for the purposes intended and preventing the technology from leaking to others.
The deal would be a tangible accomplishment of Hillary Clinton's first trip to India as US secretary of state and it could prove a boon to US companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
Both US defence contractors are in the running to compete for India's plan to buy 126 multi-role fighters, which would be one of the largest arms deals in the world as India takes steps to modernise its largely Russian-made arsenal.
The two US companies are competing with Russia's MiG-35, France's Dassault Rafale, Sweden's Saab KAS-39 Gripen and the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish firms, for the contract.
The US officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said the defence agreement was not finalised as of late Sunday but that they expected it to go through in time for Clinton's signature Monday.