New Delhi
18 November 2009
Counter-terrorism cooperation at the bilateral, regional and global levels will be
among the four or five "big ideas" that will define Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's
talks with the United States President Barack Obama in Washington on 24 November.
Another element of the US-India 3.0 relationship will be an initiative to usher in a second
'Green Revolution' for fostering sustainable economic development, which will be
similar in potential to the first green revolution in India pioneered by the late American
scientist Norman Borlaug.
Also on the bilateral agenda will be education, climate change, poverty alleviation, non-
proliferation and disarmament, US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer said, giving a
preview of the talks between Prime Minister Singh and President Obama.
He said that these "four or five big global issues" will form the cornerstones of the new
India-US strategic partnership over the next few decades, which will be unveiled towards
the end of Prime Minister Singh's State visit to the US, the first by any leader under the
Obama presidency.
The counter-terrorism cooperation between India and the US will be at "multiple levels"
and extend from a purely bilateral level to accommodate regional and global
perspectives, too.
Roemer said that the bilateral cooperation against terrorism has "never been this close"
and scale of information-sharing is "unprecedented", and the Singh-Obama meeting can
be expected to "outline future cooperation" in this area.
Discussions will also take place on the remaining items required for implementing the
India-US civil nuclear deal, which, according to Roemer, has brought a lot of trust and
confidence into the bilateral relationship. He described the nuclear deal as "a win-win
situation" for both countries.
Roemer flagged three issues that need to be resolved: a civil liability legislation, which
the Indian Parliament is expected to take up soon; licensing of US nuclear companies to
do nuclear business with India; and an agreement to enable New Delhi to reprocess
spent fuel through the transfer of appropriate technologies.
"We are optimistic that all these issues will be resolved soon. We are pushing hard," he
said.
Roemer said that Singh and Obama will also discuss non-proliferation, considering that
views of the US President and the late Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi on universal nuclear disarmament are similar.
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