Condemning the plans of an American Pastor to burn the holy Quran, the United States on Friday said such "disruptive and disrespectful" attempts hurt efforts to counter "blood thirsty elements" and terror attacks like those in New York and Mumbai.
US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer said President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and he himself condemn any individual's attempt to burn the holy Quran.
"This is highly disrespectful, divisive and disruptive. It does not represent American values," he told media persons after meeting Home Minister P Chidambaram.
Roemer said the US and India look at this issue through the same prism and feel that "this is very disruptive, disrespectful and this hurt the efforts to counter the evil and blood thirsty elements around the world".
The Ambassador said as the world approaches 9/11 (on Saturday) and the 26/11, which will come after two months, the US and India are looking for ways to counter terrorist elements across the globe.
"We look for ways to have our two countries work together on the global stage to counter these efforts to attack Mumbai or New York in the future. Part of these efforts are military and a great deal through development, through diplomacy, through religion being respected and through working together at the inter-faith level," he said.
Roemer said he conveyed to Chidambaram
"I certainly expressed to Chidambaram that the US is strongly condemning any action to burn Quran. This is disruptive, divisive, disrespectful and also this does not represent American values in shape and form. The Minister and I talked about this," he said.
Chidambaram had on Thursday condemned the plan by the pastor of a small Florida church to burn copies of the holy Quran to mark the 9/11 attacks and called on US authorities to take "strong action" to prevent such an "outrage" being committed.
Referring to his recent visit to Varanasi, the US Ambassador said he had seen in the 4,000 years old historic and beautiful city how people of different religions worked together, talked to one another and respect each other.
"I came out of Varanasi thinking that this is not just a city of temple, this is a city of hope for the world. The lessons practice by people in Varanasi were Sikhs, Jains, Hindus and Christians...all come together not just to pray and dialogue, actually they work together at the local level...on all problems and addressing the problems," he said.
Roemer said the US was looking for such examples -- the tolerance and respect -- which need to be practised in the US as well as around the world.
