"We are ready for an intense and wide-ranging cooperative engagement in all areas of human endeavour," Dr Singh said in his address at the luncheon hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department.
Influential United States Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, the new Democratic co-chair of the reconstituted US Senate India Caucus, who took over from the erstwhile Senator and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in welcoming Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to Washington, has said, "That President Obama chose the visit of Indian Prime Minister Singh as the occasion for the first State Dinner of his administration should come as no surprise."
Stating that Pakistan was at a 'critical point' of history, the United States on Wednesday offered to stand soldier-to-soldier with the country in its fight against 'tenacious and brutal terror groups'. "This is not Pakistan's fight alone," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced hours after a car bomb in Peshawar killed at least 95 people and injured over 200. "Pakistan is in the midst of a struggle against tenacious and brutal terror groups," she said.
In one of the deadliest terror attacks in Pakistan, at least 95 people were killed and over 200 injured on Wednesday when a powerful car bomb ripped through a packed market in Peshawar, hours after the United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan on her maiden official visit.
External Affairs Minister S M Krishna will be meeting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York on September 25, to apprise her about the Indian concerns over diversion of US aid by Pakistan for strengthening its defence against India, according to sources.
Is the Obama Administration concerned that the tiny Maldives could become a future base for the al Qaeda and/or other terrorist groups to conspire and launch their attacks against Washington and its South Asian allies?
Besides Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are listed as major source of terrorist financing.
'The unresolved problems with Pakistan are a bit of a drag on its other international ambitions,' Teresita C Schaffer, director of the South Asia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC, think-tank and former US diplomat, tells Aziz Haniffa.
US President Barack Obama today regretted the decision of Scotland to release a Libyan terrorist involved in the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.
The newly re-constituted US Senate India Caucus will resurrect itself on Tuesday evening with its first meeting for the year during which it will also formally welcome India's Ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, who assumed duties two months ago.
The cooling of the strategic partnership built by the Bush administration, which conferred on India the de facto nuclear weapon state status, introduces new uncertainties in Asia.
The report submitted by Obama on Monday -- which is the first one given to the US Congress by a President as required by the legislation signed into law last October by then President George W Bush, is one in a series of determinations required to be provided to lawmakers on the implementation of the Act, which details India's actions from IAEA safeguards to other non-proliferation commitments.
The USIBC said that this was 'a significant step that puts decades of Cold War baggage behind the world's two largest democracy', and that in achieving 'consensus' on this 'key bilateral agreement', it held out the promise 'to bolster the US and India as reliable partners for the long future in the sensitive areas of defence and security trade'.
India and the United States on Monday night reached an End-Use Monitoring pact on defence equipment and technology, as they vowed to push their strategic ties with Washington giving an assurance that its policy on enrichment and reprocessing technology will not affect New Delhi.
Pakistan has termed as baseless the United States' allegations, regarding the presence of culprits involved in terror attacks in the US and India, living in Pakistan.Reacting to the statement given by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, alleging that the perpetrators of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the terror attack on Mumbai are in Pakistan, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said these culprits were not in Pakistan but in Afghanistan instead.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Pakistan will again raise their demand for a deal -- similar to one the US has with India -- during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's meeting in Washington on October 22.
Kashmir-born Farah Pandith, who was recently appointed the United States' Special Representative to the Muslim world by the Obama administration, has said that she is overwhelmed with the response from India, over her new job. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had last week appointed Pandith for this first-of-its-kind position in the US government as part of President Barack Obama's effort to start a new beginning with the Muslim world and improve America's image.
The irritants that have cropped up in recent weeks in relations between India and the United States figured in the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna on the sidelines of the 65th United Nations General Assembly sessions in New York. But a senior US official said the 'superb cooperation and goodwill' between Washington and New Delhi would eclipse these hiccups and would not be a dampener on President Obama's visit.
US Senators Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat and John Cornyn, Texas Republican have launched an attempt to revive the largely comatose US Senate India Caucus.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was obviously so impressed by her meetings with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari that she ventured into the White House briefing room after sitting in on the meetings between President Barack Obama and the two leaders, to express her optimism that a solid alliance had been formed committed to crushing the Taliban and other extremist elements destabilising the region.
Close on the heels of the Barack Obama administration approving reconciliation efforts with the moderate elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States has categorically ruled out any similar settlement with the al Qaeda. "We have no interest in any kind of reconciliation or any rapprochement by anyone with al Qaeda," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "Only the Taliban, we never said al Qaeda," she said.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday said neither Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden nor Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar were present in Pakistan, a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton' assertion that the Laden is still in the country.
The international community, including India, must offer the Pakistan government all the help and encouragement that it needs to fight and root out the menace of radical extremism, or else the terrorists will spread their tentacles far and wide -- including, eventually, into India.
An Iranian nuclear scientist who had sought refuge in the Pakistani embassy compound in Washington after an apparent defection gone wrong is on his way home and has threatened to reveal full details of his 'abduction' by the Central Intelligence Agency."My abduction is a detailed story and I will reveal the details once I am back in my beloved homeland," Shahram Amiri, 35, was quoted as saying.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after the second round of Indo-US Strategic Dialogue with her counterpart S M Krishna, made it very clear that there were "issues" which required to be resolved by the two sides in the civil nuclear field. But she did not go into the specifics.
Special United States Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said he would soon head towards the troubled region in South Asia to have a first-hand assessment of the situation on the ground.In his acceptance speech, soon after he was appointed as the Special US Representative for the troubled region by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Holbrooke termed the Pakistan situation as extremely complex.
'It is important to realise that the United States looks upon India as the world's largest democracy, as an important and vital ally in a whole host of things -- regional security, global trade, climate change'.
As IMF meets to give Pakistan another loan, the country's economy remains in deep trouble.
The US on Wednesday launched a Global Entrepreneurship programme and several other ambitious projects in an effort to bridge the gap with the Muslim world and take its engagement with the community across the globe to a new level of mutual trust and friendship.
Pakistan has failed to secure a clear commitment for its much sought-after civil nuclear deal from the United States, which has decided to help in upgrading three of its thermal power plants.
The security situation in South Asia could get further complicated if the United States agrees to have a civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan, according to experts. Pakistan and the US are set to hold their first high-level strategic dialogue this week in Washington, co-chaired by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Pakistan wants a nuclear deal with the US on the lines of the ndo-US nuclear deal.
As part of efforts to convince Pakistan to abandon its policy of using extremist elements as a strategic tool, the US has warned it that there is "no good terrorist" whom it can count on and asked it to take more steps against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
Karzai was administered the oath of office by the head of Supreme Court Abdul Salam Azmi at a grand ceremony at the presidential palace in the presence of 800 guests, including External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari.
The Obama administration wants India to be a 'full partner' in its nuclear non-proliferation efforts, as Washington has 'a lot of confidence in the Indians and in their approach,' United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.
Unlike the last time, the two candidates did not shake hands before the debate. However, as the debate ended on a positive note, there was a warm handshake.
In an apparent move to placate Sri Lanka's anger over Hillary Clinton's remarks that "rape" was used as a weapon in the war against the LTTE, the US has said it had no recent evidence of women being sexually assaulted while in custody in the country.
United States Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, the new Democratic co-chair of the re-constituted US Senate India Caucus, feels that he has impossible shoes to fill, that of erstwhile Senator and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Dodd, one of the senior-most members of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, addressed an overflowing audience of Indian Americans from across the country in the ornate Mansfield Room of the US Capitol.
Despite managing to get $2.29 billion in fresh military aid, Pakistan failed to extract anything from the US on two key issues of civilian nuclear deal similar to that of India and American intervention in resolving the Kashmir issue.
In an editorial on the eve of the visit of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to India on July 17, NYT had termed New Delhi as a 'long-time nuclear scofflaw' and held India responsible on Kashmir, relations with Pakistan and also partly blamed it for the nuclear weapons programme of Iran.
The Imagindia Institute, an independent think-tank, on Sunday raised concerns about a major hurdle in US-India co-operation in civil nuclear energy, that may unravel the plans of US nuclear companies and their Indian partners to set up projects in India.
