United States Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, who places much importance to America's relationship with India, is looking forward to his maiden visit to India in his capacity as head of the Pentagon, a senior US official has said.
There is seething anger among the senior administration officials -- at State, Commerce and the Pentagon -- and representatives of business and industry that New Delhi's decision was wholly political and much of the finger-pointing was at Defence Minister A K Antony and the Defence Research and Development Organisation.
'The US and India continue to use their deepening relationship to build new partnerships within and beyond the Indo-Pacific.'
The current impasse in ties between India and Pakistan is unlikely to end soon given the fragile government in Islamabad, which is overshadowed by powerful military which heavily influences policies on Kashmir and Afghanistan, a top Pentagon official has said.
"India's historic leadership of the non-alignment movement and desire to maintain strategic autonomy somewhat constrain cooperation at a level USPACOM (US Pacific Command) desires," the US Pacific Command Commander Admiral Robert Willard said in his testimony before House Armed Services Committee.
Pakistan and its leaders consider India as an existential threat to them not terrorism or Afghanistan, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said, noting that Islamabad needs to do more in the war against terrorism.
While the announcement of the deal came on Friday, at a time of increased tension with Iran, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said in a statement that the deal was inked on December 25 when the US and UAE signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) for a Foreign Military Sales-configured Terminal High Altitude Area Defence System, valued at approximately $3.48 billion.
The US president said that there is a lot of "dislike" (between India and Pakistan).
Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, under pressure from his colleagues to "reduce" ties with the United States following the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, is said to be "fighting to survive".
Despite increased political and economic relationship between India and China, tensions remains along their border with rising instances of border violation and aggressive border patrolling by Chinese soldiers, the Pentagon has informed the United States Congress.
Nearly 200 fighters at an Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent terror training camp in the Af-Pak border region were killed in a recent attack by the US and Afghan commandos.
The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be tried in a military commission at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center along with four suspected co-conspirators, the Pentagon said.
Even months after India decided to forego the United States bid for the fighter aircraft deal worth $11 billion, the Pentagon apparently is still smarting over this rejection, arguing that it was an enormous disappointment and that New Delhi by its action had lost out on some of the state-of-the art technology.
The strongest quake to strike eastern America in more than a century rattled offices in the United States' capital. Authorities evacuated buildings as far as New York and shut down two nuclear power plants.
A major earthquake measuring about 6.0 rattled offices on Tuesday in the US capital Washington and led to panicked evacuations at the Indian embassy and in as far away as New York.
As the clamour in the United States Congress to cut off aid to Pakistan -- or at the very least suspend the massive American economic and military largesse to Islamabad --continued to grow to a crescendo, the top civilian and military leadership at the Pentagon warned against such punitive action, saying it would be counterproductive and inimical to US's security interests.
The United States and Pakistan are engaged in a billing dispute, with Washington rejecting over 40 per cent of the claims submitted by Islamabad as expenses to fight Al Qaeda and other terrorists along the Afghanistan border, according to a report.
The US seeks to expand its military co-operation with India on a range of issues including non-proliferation and counter-terrorism, to expand the scope and participation of multilateral exercises in Asia, a Pentagon report said.
The project nicknamed Falcon HTV-2 being developed by the Pentagon and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency has the capability to reach anywhere in the world in less than 60 minutes.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta will move to Pentagon to become new US Defence Secretary to replace Robert Gates while his top military commander in Afghanistan Gen David Petraeus is to takeover as the new CIA Director.
The US-Pak military ties are going through a 'very difficult time,' a top Pentagon official has conceded, but Washington is nowhere close to severing its ties with its longstanding ally.
With BRIC nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, calling for ceasefire in Libya, a top Pentagon official on Wednesday said that the onus for this lies with the Gaddafi forces, which needs to pull back its troops from cities and stop attacking civilians.
United States President Barack Obama on Friday telephoned Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to discuss the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan and killed over 360 people, as the Pentagon geared up for a possible relief and rescue operation in affected areas.
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks that released thousands of United States state department's secret documents on Sunday, is under the scanner of investigators who are trying to figure out whether or not he had violated criminal laws, and could even be charged under the Espionage Act.
While Wikileaks did not say in its message what the third instalment of their release would cover. However, a Reuters despatch from Washington DC said that classified US diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against foreign governments and leaders are expected to feature in the official documents that Wikileaks plans to release.
Two United States troopers were killed in a shooting incident near Frankfurt International Airport on Wednesday, according to media reports.Some reports claimed that two others were seriously injured in the incident which reportedly took place on board a US military shuttle bus.The two troopers were members of US Air Force stationed at Lakenheath base in the United Kingdom, said the reports.
Both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Modi have learnt from their past mistakes. Modi has understood that Rajapaksa is a 'forever politician' that India has to live with, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The US said that there has been no "significant impact" on its military to military relationship with Pakistan after Islamabad refused to release an American diplomat detained on possible murder charges.
The United States is open to Indian participation in its Joint Strike Fighter programme that would finally lead to its purchase of fifth generation F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, a top Pentagon official has said.
The United States air force nuclear command has been rocked by the worst cheating scandal in proficiency exam involving 34 officers at the inter-continental missile launch of the global strike command, the Pentagon has said.
Aziz Haniffa reports from Washington, DC on how the American Enterprise Institute, a leading neo-conservative DC think-tank, wants the US to boost its military relationship with India.
According to a New York Times report, senior American government officials said the discovery include huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium.
As Pakistan fumed over aerial attacks by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's forces inside its territory that killed nearly 50 militants, the Pentagon has asserted that armed forces have the right to self defence and the United States followed the appropriate protocol in the situation. "The armed forces have the right to self defence. They have been attacked and they respond and they notify the Pakistani government about it," said the Pentagon.
"He (Zawahiri) and his organisation still threaten us. As we did both seek to capture and kill and succeed in killing bin Laden, we certainly do or will do the same thing with Zawahiri," Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told media persons at a Pentagon news conference.
The Pentagon leadership has strongly denied reports that it has pressurised Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani to extend the military's anti-Taliban operations into North Waziristan, in the wake of the botched Times Square bombing attempt by Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who received terror training in that region.
Amidst growing demand from United States lawmakers about becoming tough with Pakistan after the killing of Osama bin Laden in the country, a top Pentagon official on Wednesday warned that walking away from Islamabad at this point of time could backfire.
The 'doomsday plane' was mobilised in the tumultuous hours after planes crashed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania on 9/11.
China is pursuing a major military build up in a "secretive manner" developing survivable nuclear delivery system, a 1,500-km range anti-ship missile to hit aircraft carriers and has the most active land based ballistic and cruise missile programme in the world, Pentagon has said.
Former Telecom Minister A Raja, at the centre of the 2G spectrum allocation scam, has earned the dubious distinction of figuring in the list of Time Magazine's "an ignominious club of privileged leaders who stepped too far".
"Given the continuing challenges posed by Pakistan's ambiguous policy toward terrorism in the region, the Obama administration must consider carefully whether its current Pakistan policy is providing sufficient dividends or whether it needs to be recalibrated in ways that convince the Pakistanis to shift their strategy toward the Taliban in more fundamental ways," noted South Asian expert, Lisa Curtis, of the Heritage Foundation said.
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