http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15353310% 255E12250,00.html
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington in July, with Bush reportedly saying this will be treated as a "grand event", and at the year's end Bush will visit India The Bush administration, far more cohesive with Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, has launched a diplomatic offensive with India that is stunning in its rhetoric and serious in its content. "India's relations with the US are now the best they have ever been," says Rajiv Sikri, the senior official on East Asia at India's external affairs ministry. Bush and Rice earlier this year "developed the outline for a decisively broader strategic relationship" between the US and India. When Rice went to New Delhi she presented this outline to Singh, its purpose being "to help India become a major world power in the 21st century", the abiding dream of the Indian elite. The spokesman continued: "We [the US] understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement." It is rare in the past 100 years that a US president has sent a signal of this dimension. It means the US will help India realise the global aspiration that its size, geography and its post-1991 economic reform agenda has made into a national obsession. Events are moving fast. The US is offering India a top-of-the-line version of the F-16, hi- tech defence and space co-operation in terms of satellites and launch vehicles, Patriot and Arrow missiles, and access to civilian nuclear technology. (India's aim is to generate 25 per cent to 30 per cent of its huge energy needs from nuclear.) "The strategic dialogue will include global issues, the kinds of issues you would discuss with a world power," the State Department spokesman said. The US was prepared to "discuss even more fundamental issues of defence transformation with India, including transformative systems in areas such as command and control, early warning and missile defence." After Rice's visit, US ambassador to India David Mulford said the US and India "are poised for a partnership that will be crucial in shaping the international order in the 21st century". To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
