Washington: President Barack Obama’s visit to India will build on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s highly successful trip here, nominee for US Ambassador to India Rich-ard Rahul Verma has said, describing it as a “defining and exciting” time in the re-energised Indo-US ties.
“There is no question that this is a defining and exciting time in the US-India relationship. President Obama will make a historic visit to India in January, becoming the first US head of state to attend India’s Republic Day and the only sitting US president to visit India twice,” Verma told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Commit-tee on Tuesday during his confirmation hearing.
Obama’s trip will build on Prime Minister Modi’s highly successful visit to the United States in September, he said. “There’s little doubt the relationship has been re-energised, with renewed enthusiasm to take our partnership to the next level,” said Verma.
Verma, 45, if confirmed, would be the first ever Indian- American to be the top US diplomat in New Delhi. He would replace Nancy Powell, who resigned from her position early this year. Verma said America’s strategic partnership with India is rooted in their shared democratic values and in the joint vision of a peaceful, just and prosperous world.
“From expanding trade and defence relationships, to ensuring maritime secu-rity and freedom of navigation, from countering terrorist networks to promoting clean energy and sustainable development the US and India share a wide-range of critical national interests.
Our partnership is deep, it touches nearly every endeavour of human pursuit, and it has produced important gains for each of our countries,” he said. Referring to the growing co-operation between India and the US in various field including trade and defence, Verma said the ripple effects of our partnership need not be limited to Asia.
“As Prime Minister Modi noted, the true power and potential in this relationship is that when the oldest and largest democracies come together, the world will benefit,” he said.
Verma said despite differences and some frustrating moments the trend line in the bilateral partnership is very strong. “The relationship that we seek with India is really anchored in our values and our interests –largest democracy and oldest democracy,” he said.
“Our strategic impact can be felt not only in South Asia but also now in East Asia, as we do have a convergence of interests, and that is, we have to articulate a vision…I think we have to think much broader than a transactional relationship.
Think about the strategic partnership that we both can have and can achieve,” he said. “That’s the vision statement. We have to operationalise that and we can operationalise that through our defence rela-tionship, through econo-mics and trade, through energy and climate.
There are a lot of different ways. ” Verma said in response to a ques-tion from Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Verma acknowledged that the US also has challenges which come from India’s history, a very proud history of non-alignment. “Sometimes we get frus-trated when they don’t join us in international cam-paigns or on international efforts more publicly.
“Trade with India has increased five times in the last 10 years. We can do much more if we can work together on some of these market access issues and on some of the trade issues, which are vitally important,” the Ambassadorial nominee said. “I think in recent weeks there’s a good-news story on the trade side,” he said. (PTI)
