NEW DELHI, July 25: Striving for a firm foothold in the vast defence market that India is, US Deputy Secretary of Defence Ashton B Carter today concluded his four-day visit on a firm fix that defence relationship between India and the US was an important dimension of “our strategic partnership”. The “successful visit” derives its succour from the fact that Dr Carter was able to meet and impress upon his views across the range of meetings he had with high officials here, where he stressed on the fact that the United States was “committed to finding innovative ways to increase our defence cooperation with India”. Here to identify opportunities to take an already strong defence relationship to the next level, Dr Carter’s visit reinforced the message that both India and the US “have crossed a threshold in our relations”, according to the Embassy here. While accepting that “there is greater potential, and areas of cooperation that can be tapped in the overall India-US partnership”, the US believes that “defence relationship between our two countries is an important dimension of our strategic partnership”, which has been reaffirmed during last month’s “US-India Strategic Dialogue”. In its note on Deputy Secretary’s July 22-25 visit, the Embassy said Dr Carter’s meetings was a follow-up on last month’s Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to India where the Secretary stressed on the imperativeness of working together ‘to deepen our security partnership – so that our relationship becomes more strategic, more practical, and more collaborative’. In this direction, Dr Carter discussed here ways and means with his Indian counterparts in the Ministries of Defence and the External Affairs to make ‘our respective bureaucratic processes simpler, more responsive, and more effective’ in order to raise the level of defence trade and cooperation. Besides this, it said, “The Deputy Secretary also met with Indian defence industry executives in Hyderabad to discuss practical next steps for streamlining bureaucratic barriers in both the US and India”, while adding that he also toured several Indo-US facilities that were co-producing transport plane and helicopter components. (UNI)
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