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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  John Kerry to focus on reviving ties with India
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John Kerry to focus on reviving ties with India

Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, Kerry to also aim to lay the ground for a productive visit to the US by Narendra Modi in September

US secretary of state John Kerry. Photo: ReutersPremium
US secretary of state John Kerry. Photo: Reuters

New Delhi: US secretary of state John Kerry arrived in Delhi on Wednesday for what are expected to be wide-ranging talks to help revive flagging ties with India.

While an Indian official pointed to an agenda of “transformative initiatives", the US commerce secretary signalled the challenges ahead by criticising India’s move to block a key global trade agreement.

India and the US will explore transformative initiatives to propel their bilateral relations to the next level during the fifth round of their strategic dialogue, foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said.

In their talks spread over Thursday and Friday, the first face-to-face contact between senior officials of the Barack Obama administration and the new Indian government, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and Kerry will aim to lay the ground for a productive visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington in September.

“This (the strategic dialogue) will be an opportunity to exchange ideas so that the US and India can work towards transformative initiatives during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Washington," Akbaruddin said. “We will work towards a successful visit by the Prime Minister in which we hope to have transformative ideas on the table to take the relationship to the next level."

India-US ties have been strained by many disputes, mostly recently by India’s opposition to adopting a trade facilitation agreement (TFA) at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“We are very disappointed that India has taken a step back from its agreements that it made in December (last) at the WTO," US secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker said in an interview to the Press Trust of India news agency on Wednesday. “I am an optimist, I am hopeful that over the next couple of days there is some potential for resolution... I’m hopeful that even in the last remaining days India might find a way to come to a solution on this issue."

The TFA, drafted during a ministerial meeting at Bali, Indonesia, last December, has to be sealed by 31 July. But India is seeking guarantees on food security stockholdings for its hundreds of millions of poor as a precondition for passage of the pact. India has proposed postponing the deadline for adopting the TFA and putting on the WTO table a road map for a solution by December to the food security issue, crucial to developing countries.

Pritzker is scheduled to meet trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday. Besides the TFA and WTO, India’s intellectual property rights regime and the issue of a long-pending bilateral investment treaty could also come up for discussion, government officials said.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Sitharaman criticised the US for taking a “unilateral measure" to press countries to accept intellectual property rights (IPR) protection beyond WTO obligations. The US Special 301 report, an annual review of the global state of IPR protection and enforcement, has classified India as a priority watch-list country.

The report is “an extra territorial application of the domestic law of a country and is not tenable under the overall WTO regime," Sitharaman said.

Another prickly issue that could come up at the talks on Thursday concerns allegations that the US National Security Agency snooped on targets in India, including figures in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) when it was in opposition.

India had earlier protested when reports came out that its UN mission in New York and embassy in Washington were spied upon.

Both sides are looking to revitalise ties that have been strained by a string of disputes after warming since 2000. Analysts in India also point a finger at the Obama administration’s pre-occupation with several global crises for its sagging interest in reanimating ties with India.

On Wednesday, Akbaruddin, focussing on the positives, said India-US ties were in a “stage of stable and mature growth".

Subjects on the agenda for the Swaraj-Kerry talks include security, energy, trade and investment, human resources development and regional and international issues.

During his visit, Kerry will also meet with India’s national security advisor Ajit Doval, finance and defence minister Arun Jaitely and call on Prime Minister Modi.

Asit Ranjan Mishra of Mint and PTI contributed to this story.

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Published: 30 Jul 2014, 11:21 AM IST
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