Bush, however, also said that outgoing President Donald Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, with any unresolved issues to be "properly adjudicated".
Terming the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir as an important achievement, classified United States documents released by Wikileaks revealed that Washington was keen on 'preserving' the truce by denouncing the violations carried out by Pakistani troops.
India and the United States can work together not to fight an 'authoritarian' China but to make it observe the rule of law, former US diplomat and Harvard professor Nicholas Burns said on Friday in a conversation with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Planning in India will need to change to take account of a more volatile global economy.
United States President Barack Obama will attend a Diwali reception on Friday, the White House has said. "In the evening, the President will attend a Diwali reception in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building," the White House said on Thursday. While a Diwali reception at the Eisenhower Executive building, which is part of the White House office complex, was started during the George W Bush administration, Obama was the first US President to attend the celebrations.
While Obama administration officials and representatives of US industry strongly expressed their angst over India's rejection of the American fighter aircraft but did not want to be quoted by name, leading South Asia policy wonks in Washington had no such compunctions in interviews with rediff.com.
United States lawmakers feel that India had also failed to use its non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council to demonstrate why it should be a permanent member
Noted strategic affairs expert Ashley Tellis, who was actively involved in negotiating the India-United States civilian nuclear agreement while serving in the George W Bush administration, has said the US is indispensable for the success of all of India's endeavours. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is fully cognisant of this reality and this explains his unshakeable commitment to the India-US strategic partnership, he said.
America's top counter-terrorism official Michael Leiter will quit next month, adding to the turmoil at the top levels of United States President Barack Obama's national security team.
Ashley Tellis, a former official in the George W Bush administration and key foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, had initially been a sceptic of the (United States President Barack) Obama administration's policy toward South Asia and specifically India.
Karl F Inderfurth, who was Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs in the Clinton administration, and Nicholas Burns, who was Under Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, told rediff.com that Obama's endorsement during his address to a joint session of Parliament thus made his visit to India transformational too in a sense as had the trip by Clinton in March of 2000 and Bush in March 2006.
United States Barack President Obama during his visit to India -- and preferably during his address to India's Parliament -- should do something big, like declaring 'forthrightly' Washington's support for India's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, another report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's presence at the first-ever Nuclear Security Summit hosted by United States President Barack Obama, beginning April 12, will be key for 'critical substantive reasons', believes Dr Ashley J Tellis, an expert on nonproliferation and nuclear security matters.
Indian American Muslim Republicans have expressed outrage over the rabble-rousing of fellow Republican leaders like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and erstwhile Alaska Governor Sarah Palin over the proposed building of a mosque-cum-community centre near Ground Zero, and warned that their bigotry will drive Muslim Americans out of the party.
The India-United States civil nuclear deal inked during Bush Administration has not been handled as well it should have been by the US, a key Republican lawmaker has said.
Filmmaker Michael Moore's unpopularity with the Bush administration was never a secret but a Wikileaks cable has revealed that panicky US officials had tried to stop a screening of his documentary 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in New Zealand, terming it a "potential fiasco"
US President Barack Obama has said that he has "reset" the button of relationship with its Cold War adversary Russia, ties with which had dipped a new low during the previous Bush Administration.
Pakistan did not oppose the George W Bush administration's move to ink a civil nuclear agreement with India because it expected it would receive a similar deal from the United States, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said.
Foreign policy expert Dr Ashley J Tellis believes there are three fundamental objectives that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the United States can accomplish.
Following the 9/11 terror strikes, when the US had made up its mind to bombard Afghanistan, Pakistan''s Inter-Services Intelligence and then President Pervez Musharraf made full efforts to save the Taliban and tried to persuade a red-faced Bush administration to hold a dialogue with the Taliban, as the Inter-Services-Intelligence always regarded it as one of its strategic assets.
Terming the passing of the civil nuclear liability bill by the Parliament as 'flawed', an eminent American expert on South Asian affairs has said the US policy makers and industrial leaders have been taken off guard by this and it threatens to cast a pall over the historic Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.
What has peeved the administration most is the civilian government's lack of control of its border areas and failed peace deals with extremist elements. These failed efforts by Islamabad have led to exponential growth of these jihadis. The mounting evidence of the collusion of Pakistani intelligence with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in launching attacks against American forces in Afghanistan, is worrying the Bush administration.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by US Congressmen if the US had explore the possibility of northwest India for counter terrorism capabilities in Afghanistan. Blinken's remarks on India assume great importance, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
Former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who was the star diplomat in the Bush Administration who negotiated the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, has rubbished Pakistan's request for a similar accord saying the A Q Khan network was the mother of all nuclear technology proliferators and said Pakistan's concerns over India's involvement in Afghanistan are over-rated.
In a scathing indictment of the nuclear liability bill passed by Indian Parliament, Nicholas Burns, former under secretary of state in the Bush administration, has warned that if the bill was not amended it could sound the death knell of the historic Indo-US nuclear deal and adversely impact on the envisaged US-India strategic partnership.
On the eve of US President Barack Obama's visit to India next month, a new report has urged, as a top priority, that the US unambiguously and unequivocally endorse New Delhi's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations.
The US army has appointed a senior general to direct and oversee its cyber warfare division. General Keith B Alexander has been entrusted with the Pentagon's new Cyber Command, the Guardian reported.
"After six hectic years, particularly the last four of the Bush administration, the pace has been too scorching for both systems and so much had been done", hence there is need for pause, reflection and consolidation feels Dr C Raja Mohan.
'India has much to be apprehensive about President Obama's Afpak policy, nuclear agenda and outsourcing.'
The Obama Administration has reiterated its strong commitment to the US-India civilian nuclear deal consummated during the tenure of the previous George W Bush Administration and said it's "embedded" in a broader strategic dialogue between Washington and New Delhi, but contended it's certainly not a template for negotiations with the likes of Iran.
In a statement, the Hindu American Foundation said: "Never before had a sitting US President personally celebrated the Diwali holiday, and with that one gesture, two million Hindu-Americans felt a bit more like they belonged -- one more reason to feel at home."
Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley had participated in terror camps being run by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan, despite promises by the then president Parvez Musharraf in 2002 to the George W Bush administration, that all such facilities will be shut down. Headley, a LeT operative arrested in October 2009 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had attended five such training camps run by the terror outfit between 2002 and 2003, according to Headley's plea agreement.
Former Bush Administration official Ashley J Tellis, considered one of US' foremost strategic experts, praised Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his forbearance in dealing with Pakistan, while the addressing the Congress on the impending threat posed by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba on Thursday.
The new Indian American Republican Council chairman Dino Teppara and its long-time board member and strategist Suhail Khan -- a former senior Bush Administration official -- contacted by India Abroad / rediff.com for a reaction to the garrulous conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who insulted Indian workers who undertake outsourced jobs by American companies as 'slumdogs,' issued a carefully worded, restrained and cautious statement.
Manisha Singh, an erstwhile senior staffer of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former political appointee during the George Bush Administration, has landed a top job as the executive director of the Barer Institute based at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.
Curtis, who was the lead panellist at a conference at The Brookings Institution titled, The US-India Nuclear Agreement: Expectations and Consequences,' said, "During the Bush Administration, US officials broke the habit of viewing India solely through the India-Pakistan lens. Washington developed a greater appreciation for the Indian democratic miracle and viewed our shared democratic principles as the bedrock for a broader strategic partnership."
The Barack Obama administration has announced the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate prison abuse cases that were carried out as part of the torture programme during the eight years of the George W Bush era. The announcement in this regard was made by Attorney General Eric H Holder soon after the Justice Department released a long-secret report on Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation techniques during the Bush administration's tenure, post-9/11.
The nonproliferation lobby in the United States, which is vehemently opposed to the India-US nuclear deal, has objected strongly to the new draft proposal submitted by the Bush administration to the Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna, before it convenes on August 21 to consider the India-specific exemption from NSG rules. The group has termed the proposal 'an abomination that should be flatly rejected by the NSG'.
The apparent consensus among South Asia watchers and experts in United States is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's three-day visit to Mumbai and New Delhi was a slam dunk in effectively quashing the contention of naysayers, both in India and the US, that the Barack Obama administration was less committed to the India-US strategic partnership than its predecessor George W Bush administration.
South Asia experts have called the recent Obama-Singh meet a success, going by the positive signals given by both sides in all major areas of cooperation, both bilateral and multilateral.
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