US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will look to ramp up regional
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will look to ramp up regional security cooperation and trade ties in talks with Indian leaders today, held in the shadow of triple bomb blasts in Mumbai.
India’s concerns over the US troop drawdown in Afghanistan and its renewed peace talks with arch-rival Pakistan will also loom when Clinton addresses a US-India “strategic dialogue” in New Delhi.
She will hold one-on-one talks with India’s National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, before flying Wednesday to the southern city of Chennai — a focus for growing US trade and investment.
Her visit follows the blasts in Mumbai last week that killed 19 people and injured more than 130.
India suspended its peace dialogue with Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and talks between the nuclear-armed neighbours only resumed earlier this year.
Washington’s own relations with Pakistan — a crucial counter-terrorism ally — have deteriorated since US commandos shot and killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 in a Pakistani garrison town, sowing distrust on both sides.
Earlier this month Washington suspended almost a third of the $2.7 billion in security assistance it provides each year to Islamabad.
Clinton will have “extensive conversations” in New Delhi on security cooperation, the US official said, and push Washington’s vision for a political and economic solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and “a future in the region that is free of Al-Qaeda”.
India is wary of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, fearing that Islamist elements within Pakistan could take advantage of a power vacuum in the war-torn country.
Clinton’s two-day trip follows President Barack Obama’s visit in November — a courtship of India that reflects the rapid growth in the country’s economy and a shift in power to emerging nations as a result of the global financial crisis.
A landmark deal between the two countries in 2008 that allowed India to buy nuclear reactors and fuel was meant to lead to major contracts for US firms, but those hopes have been undermined by legal obstacles and uncertainty.
And the United States was deeply disappointed in April when its bidders were dropped from the $12 billion competition to provide India with 126 combat aircraft, one of the largest military contracts of recent years.
Clinton’s India visit will partly be aimed at “closing out the remaining obstacles and getting to full implementation” of the nuclear agreement, the US official said.
Bilateral trade increased by 30 percent to nearly $50 billion in 2010.
(Above pic: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao on her arrival at the Air Force Station at Palam in New Delhi on Monday. Photo: Shanker Chakravarty. Source AFP