'Scope for progress with India on contentious issues'

On the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's India visit, the United States today said there is a scope for progress with New Delhi on all major contentious issues including global nonproliferation agreement, Doha round of trade talks and climate change.  

"We believe there is scope for progress on all three of those issues. And, you know, we look forward to working with our Indian friends on all three," Assistant Secretary of State for South and central Asia Robert Blake told reporters at a press briefing held to give a preview of the Clinton's trip to India beginning tomorrow.  

With respect to climate change, the Obama Administration thinks there is a big opportunity now for India to pursue a path, a clean energy path that will leapfrog sort of the old technologies and adopt a clean energy, low-carbon future, Blake noted.  

Asserting that India is "very much" committed to that, he said: "We've already had extensive bilateral consultations and multilateral consultations on the very important Copenhagen meetings that will be coming up in December."  

The US hopes the two countries can work together to find a solution and common ground so that there can be a strong international agreement on that, Blake added.

Noting that there are new opportunities now on global trade, he shared that new Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has expressed India's intention to work with the US to try to move to a final phase of negotiations on Doha.  

Similarly, on nonproliferation, he argued the agreement on civil nuclear cooperation opens the door for much greater cooperation, not only bilaterally in terms of the nuclear sites, but also multilaterally.  

"India's special negotiator on these issues, Shyam Saran, gave a speech at Brookings earlier this year, in which he said that India looks forward to working with the United States and other countries to advance the global nonproliferation agenda," Blake said.  

"So part of the new strategic cooperation that will be announced will be, a dialogue on nonproliferation issues that will be shared at a very senior level by our new Under Secretary Ellen Tauscher and obviously with her Indian counterpart," he added.