Indo-US ’strategic dialogue framework’ on anvil

WASHINGTON - US officials are giving finishing touches to a “strategic dialogue framework with India” to take their relationship to the next level during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s state visit, the first hosted by the Obama administration.

Besides Manmohan Singh’s summit meeting with President Barack Obama at an official state dinner on Nov 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials will meet with Indian officials to put together the new framework to be announced at the end of the visit.

“This is a state visit. I think it’s the first state visit of the Obama Administration,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Tuesday again underling what the administration officials have been stressing since the visit was first announced.

The White House is working on an agenda, he said, but gave no details. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs “Bill Burns has been very actively involved in coordinating the strategic dialogue framework that we have with India,” Kelly said.

Clinton “looks forward to participating in these meetings,” he said. “I think she’s going to host at least one event here at the State Department.”

Kelly also said that Obama will brief Manmohan Singh on his visit to China from which he returns just a couple of days before the prime minister arrives on Sunday, Nov 22.

“And I’m sure that since the president will have just gotten back from China, and that’ll be fresh on his mind that he’ll - that he will share some of his impressions and thoughts about his visit to China as well,” he said.

Though on a State visit, Manmohan Singh would be staying at the Willard Hotel, a block east of the White House, instead of Blair House, located right across from the White House, where most foreign dignitaries on state visits stay.

After a night’s rest, the prime minister begins his visit with an address US industry leaders at the US-India Business Council, a trade advocacy group seeking stronger commercial ties between the two countries, to share his vision of the future of US-India relations.

Later in the day, Manmohan Singh will have what’s billed as “a conversation” with foreign policy experts from the Council on Foreign Relations and Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, two leading US think tanks.

The official state dinner, a black tie, bandhgala event comes the next day, Nov 24, with a welcoming ceremony on the White House lawns. Obama’s Republican predecessor George Bush also feted him there as a state guest in 2005.

The prime minister will receive various cabinet principals, including Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, at the Willard Wednesday before attending a reception for the Indian community in the US hosted by Ambassador Meera Shankar in the evening.

He will leave Washington DC Thursday morning, which is Thanksgiving holiday in the US, for Port of Spain, Trinidad, to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)