America-India Relations: A senior US administration official said on Monday that his country is deepening relations with India in many important areas including economic and security cooperation and will continue to do so. US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said this in his daily press conference in response to a question related to relations between India and America and the conversation between US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the recent G-7 summit in Italy.
He said, “India is a country with which we are deepening our relations in many important areas, especially economic relations, security cooperation.” He said, “US President Joe Biden had the opportunity to meet Prime Minister Modi briefly during the G-7 summit a few weeks ago.” He said, “We will work towards continuing to strengthen these relations.”
Patel mentioned that the US hosted Prime Minister Modi’s state visit last year. He said, “I think there are many more areas where the two countries can deepen cooperation.”
Prime Minister Modi visited the US in June last year at the invitation of President Biden and during this time the two countries signed several major agreements related to defence, trade and space cooperation. He said, “(US) National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also visited Delhi a few weeks ago.”
Sullivan visited India from June 17 to 18 and held wide-ranging talks with his counterpart Ajit Doval, focusing on the implementation of the ambitious India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (ICET).
Responding to a question on Pakistan, Patel condemned terrorism but said, “It is ultimately a matter between India and Pakistan.” “Broadly, we certainly welcome any country seeking to have more positive relations with its neighbours but as far as it relates specifically to this, I don’t want to comment on it,” he said.