External Affairs Minister addresses 1st India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in Washington, D.C.
By TN Ashok / Diplomatic Editor
New Delhi, Sept 23: India’s Foreign Minister Ms Sushma Swaraj today told the United States that bilateral engagement with it became crucial with it in the economic space as a propserous India offered great investment opportunities in the long term.
“We have sought to view the economic space of bilateral engagement as a crucial component of our strategic relationship. We firmly believe that an economically prosperous and successful India offers a long term opportunity to the U.S. industry and capital to deepen its mutually beneficial partnership with India through investment and technology and manufacturing”, Ms Swaraj said while addressing the 1st India US strategic and Commercial Dialogue in Washington DC ahead of Prime Minister’s visit to Washington. .
Ms Swaraj pointed out that defence and security cooperation, strategic political engagement including in the field of civil nuclear cooperation, S&T, Health, Space, Energy, Health, trade and investment etc were some of the domains where India had sustained intense delivery oriented engagement. “” In some other domains though, creativity and shaper focus would ensure that we meet mutually agreed objectives and targets”, she said
The External Affairs Minister said that this dialogue provided India the opportunity to assess where it stood in terms of the goals that it had set for itself and set targets and objectives for the future. “It is also important that we give ourselves timelines to achieve the targets. We should also be in a position to present to our leaders a clear vision of the road ahead”, she observed.
The US Secretary of State Kerry, Secretary Pritzker, Secretary Moniz, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitaraman, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Foreign Secretary Jai Shankar, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma and India’s Ambassador in US Arun Singh were all present on the occasion.
Ms Swaraj said she thanked Secretary Kerry and Secretary Pritzker and the U.S. Government for hosting the first meeting of the India-U.S. Strategic and Commercial Dialogue as it provided her and her Ministerial colleagues an opportunity to guide the deliberations along with Cabinet level colleagues from the U.S. Government and with officials on both sides.
The External Affairs Minister said:”These are busy times in India-U.S. relations. The impressive intensity, scale and level of achievements in our bilateral engagement since last year, is a testimony to the leadership, direct supervision and the tremendous importance attached to the bilateral relationship by our leaders, Prime Minister Modi and President Obama.”
At a very fundamental level, Ms Swaraj pointed out that a popular and bipartisan support in both the countries and shared values of democracy, freedom of speech and rule of law constituted the key pillars of Indo –US Strategic Partnership.
The emerging context of India-U.S. political, strategic and security, and economic ties continues to be constantly shaped by international geo-politics, the strength of the Indian economy amidst global economic uncertainties and the need for partnership among democracies to respond to some of the global challenges like terrorism, he said.
“The narrative and specifics of substantive cooperative agenda are shaped by increasing convergences of strategic interests and mutual concerns, including in the Indian Ocean Region and the Asia-Pacific”, she said.
A strong intent to tailor the Indo US relationship to harness political synergies and optimize economic complementarities, bilaterally, regionally and globally, permeates India’s approach to its ties with the U.S., she said adding that Secretary Kerry clearly shared that as evidenced by the U.S. approach.
Ms Swaraj said that one of the defining characteristics of India’s bilateral cooperative agenda with the United States since July last year has been purposeful action to implement the decisions agreed between the leaders of the two countries.
Two Summit level meetings; regular Cabinet level engagements; robust and frequent strategic consultations and relentless domain specific functional interactions have ensured that there is no slackening of effort and no dilution of focus in our engagement on bilateral, regional and global issues, he said.
In this endeavor the community of Americans of Indian origin, and more than 100,000 students studying in the US provide us an organic, living bridge in the dynamic partnership, he said adding to strengthen this further, India would be hosting the Regional Pravisiya Bharitya Divas in Los Angeles in November this year