US Deputy Secretary of Defence Ashton B Carter holds a series of meetings with Indian officials in New Delhi ahead of India’s Prime Minister Dr. Singh’s visit to the United States; Carter: India and the US are destined to be partners on the world stage; I
  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Whatsapp
  • Linkedin
  • Print
  • (SEPTEMBER 16-22)

    Reports noted that ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's trip to Washington and New York next week, visiting US Deputy Secretary of Defence Ashton B Carter held a series of meetings with national security advisor (NSA) Shiv Shankar Menon, foreign secretary Sujatha Singh and defence secretary R K Mathur to push for several co-production and co-development military projects as a cornerstone to the bilateral strategic partnership. From offering joint manufacturing facilities for the next-generation of Javelin anti-tank guided missiles to C-130J "Super Hercules" aircraft, Carter said the US was looking to partner with India across "the entire spectrum" of defence capabilities with "no boundaries" being set. "This is the new way for India and US. We do not have the history that Russia does. We are trying to replicate it," he said, referring to Indo-Russian joint ventures like the one manufacturing BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles. 1

    Meanwhile, according to reports, India and the US are destined to be partners on the world stage because of shared values and outlooks, a top US official told Indian officials ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the US. US Deputy Defence Secretary Ashton Carter conveyed this message to India during his just concluded visit to India in preparation of Manmohan Singh's Sep 27 meeting here with President Barack Obama, according to Pentagon Press Secretary George Little. 2

    According to reports, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prepares to leave for his bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama, New Delhi has reiterated that the proposed immigration Bill being discussed in the US Congress will hurt Indian information technology (IT) companies by adversely impacting visas for highly skilled non-immigrant workers. Foreign secretary Sujatha Singh said Indian IT companies have a certain business model and that the procedures that are being discussed in the US Congress would make it difficult this business model to be continued successfully. 3

    Meanwhile, according to reports, India’s National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon on September 20 dismissed notions that bilateral ties were drifting apart and emphasised that the two sides were partnering on a broad spectrum of strategic issues, including energy, defence, counter-terror and cyber and space security. Pointing out that the India-US relations have come a long way in the last decade, Menon said, "From a time when we dealt with each other formally, sometimes warily, we today have a full spectrum relationship, between our governments, our peoples and our institutions.” 4

    Reports noted that the United States and Russia unveiled an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by mid-2014, sparking a diplomatic drive on September 15 to secure broad international backing for the deal. The landmark agreement, announced in Geneva on September 14, left the door open to unspecified sanctions if Damascus fails to comply, and was swiftly hailed by the West. However it was equally swiftly rejected by Syrian rebels who warned it would not halt the bloodshed in the conflict that has killed more than 110,000 people and displaced millions in two and a half years. Under the accord struck in three days of talks in Geneva between US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now has a week to hand over details of his regime's stockpile. Kerry said Assad's regime must also provide "immediate and unfettered" access to inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)." 5

    According to reports, US President Barack Obama has welcomed the deal reached on September 14 to strip Syria of chemical weapons but said much remains to be done and warned Damascus to comply with the accord. In a statement, Obama said that if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad does not live up to the deal Washington reached with Syria's ally Russia, "the United States remains prepared to act." 6

    According to reports, the US special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, James Dobbins on September 16 said that Washington still hoped to talk directly with the Taliban to support an Afghan peace deal but that the militants seemed unwilling to do so. The Taliban opened an office in the Qatari capital Doha in June aimed at talking to the United States ahead of next year's withdrawal of most American troops, but diplomacy collapsed before it even began. "We would still like to see that dialogue initiated, a dialogue that would involve the US and Taliban directly but would also involve the Afghan government or its High Peace Council," said Dobbins. 7

    In other developments, reports noted that the United States and Russia have signed a joint agreement to significantly expand cooperation on nuclear energy, research and security projects, building on a long-standing history of working on such areas together, energy leaders for the two countries said in statements this week. “This Agreement supports President Obama’s nonproliferation and climate priorities by providing a venue for scientific collaboration and relationship-building between the US and Russian research and technical communities,” said US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who signed the agreement on September 16 in Vienna, where he was attending an international atomic energy conference. 8

    According to reports, Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, on September 17, postponed an official visit to Washington in protest at the spying activities of the US National Security Agency. The row between the biggest economies in North and South America was the latest diplomatic fallout from the top-secret documents leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden. In August, Obama announced he was pulling out of a bilateral meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over Moscow's decision to grant asylum to Snowden. 9

    Top