Obama to roll out red carpet for Indian PM
Posted: 22 November 2009 1514 hrs

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WASHINGTON: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was due Sunday to start the first US state visit under President Barack Obama, who hopes to show his dedication to the emerging power even as his attention lies elsewhere.

The prime minister was scheduled to fly into Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, two days before Obama rolls out the red carpet and toasts Singh at his White House's first black-tie dinner.

The state visit is a sign of the rapidly warming relationship between the world's two largest democracies, which had uneasy ties during the Cold War but which Obama has vowed to treat as a first-rate partner.

"India is a rising global power," said Robert Blake, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia. "We think that India has an increasingly significant role to play on virtually all of the major challenges that we face in this century."

While issues from counter-terrorism to trade to climate change were expected on the agenda, experts said the state visit likely had a broader intention - for Obama to show India he did not take it for granted.

Obama invited Singh to come just days after the US leader returned from a trip to boost cooperation with China, another emerging power whose relations with both the United States and India have seen sharp ups and downs.

Obama has also put a top priority on rooting out extremism in Pakistan, India's historic rival.

While broadly supportive of Obama's aims in Pakistan, many Indians fret on whether the United States will carefully oversee its giant US$7.5 billion aid package for the Islamic world's only declared nuclear power.

India's own nuclear program was long a source of friction with the United States, but former president George W. Bush and Singh reached a landmark deal that ended New Delhi's decades-long pariah status on civilian nuclear energy.

Obama has pledged to complete technicalities to finalize the deal, even though some lawmakers from his Democratic Party initially opposed it because of India's refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“The chattering classes in India are still nervous about Obama," said Teresita Schaffer, the South Asia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank.

"There is this sense that Bush had an emotional commitment to the relationship with India. Obama has a cerebral one which is moreover being eaten away by our domestic issues and, of course, by the problem of Pakistan and Afghanistan," she said.

Singh will talk with the US top brass as Obama is locked in discussions on the next step in Afghanistan, where his commander is seeking to bolster the 68,000-strong US troop presence.

India has been a major supporter of reconstruction in Afghanistan, to the consternation of Pakistan which worries it is losing influence in its northern neighbour.

Influential Indian analyst C. Raja Mohan, a professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, said that Singh should not shy away from weighing in on Afghanistan as it was clearly the top foreign issue on Obama's mind.

"The people who are trying to get us both are truly interlinked. And we don't have to be hostile to Pakistan," Mohan said. "If you see it that way, there is huge room for cooperation."

The United States and India are expected to sign a pact on stepping up cooperation on counter-terrorism, one year after Islamic militants' grisly assault on Mumbai that left 166 people dead.

But Obama and Singh may struggle to see eye-to-eye on one key issue - climate change. The United States and India are insisting that the other side commit to greater action ahead of next month's high-stakes climate summit in Copenhagen.

"I'm afraid if anything, the gap has widened a bit," Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian who heads the Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN scientific panel on climate change, told Washington-based reporters on a conference call.

But Pachauri said that Obama and Singh had a "remarkable opportunity" to get their countries going on joint projects to pioneer green technology.

- AFP/yb