Preparatory meetings from July for Obama’s India visit
By Arvind Padmanabhan, IANSTuesday, June 29, 2010
ON BOARD AIR INDIA ONE - US National Security Advisor James L. Jones is visiting India next month to start the preparatory work for President Barack Obama’s maiden official visit to India.
“We have a really ambitious agenda,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told journalists Tuesday on his way back from the G20 Summit in Toronto, where he had a meeting with President Obama.
“He will be sending his national security adviser in the second week of July. He will meet our National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon,” he said. “They will chalk out the agenda for President Obama’s visit.”
At Toronto, the US president had praised the statesmanship of Manmohan Singh and the rise of India and said he was looking forward and “excited” about visiting India with First Lady Michelle later this year.
“It is a trip that I’m very much looking forward to,” said Obama, before holding talks with Manmohan Singh after the end of the G20 Summit where there was convergence of views expressed by India and the US.
“We are also just excited because of the tremendous cultural, as well as political and social and economic examples, that India is providing the world and has in the past.”
On his part, Manmohan Singh had said it was his privilege to enjoy Obama’s friendship and that he was waiting to welcome the US president and his family to India so that they could see for themselves the transformations the country was undergoing.
(Arvind Padmanabhan can be contacted at arvind.p@ians.in)
