Gates on India visit from tomorrow

I / Washington January 18, 2010, 13:34 IST

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates will visit India from tomorrow, with deliberations on regional security situation top on his agenda during a tour that will reinforce the importance the Obama Administration places on the bilateral ties.

During the January 19-21 tour, Gates will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and Defence Minister A K Antony. "Our objective is to reinforce the importance we place on our bilateral relationship with India as an emerging global power," Defence Department spokesperson Major Maureen Schmuann said today.

"We will discuss ways to deepen the current and look for new areas of trade and cooperation. We will also discuss regional security issues," Schumann said.

This would be the first visit of Gates to India in two years and also the first by a top member of the Obama Administration after the State Visit of the Prime Minister to Washington in November. Gates had a special meeting with the Prime Minister during his US trip, during which the two leaders discussed bilateral relationship and regional issues.

The Defence Secretary would arrive in New Delhi after his quick trip to Kabul and Islamabad. During his trip to Islamabad, Gates is likely to meet President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha.

While Pakistan wants increased military support to pursue its war against terrorism, the US wants Islamabad to expand their war against the extremists in South Waziristan to North Waziristan, the stronghold of the Afghan Taliban.

Gates, who was the Defence Secretary in the previous Bush Administration too, believes that India is a major global regional power and an emerging global power.

In a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore in May, Gates had said that in the coming years, the United States would look at India to be a partner and a net provider of security in Indian Ocean and beyond.

Identifying India as one of the emerging power centres, Gates said, "When it comes to India, we have seen a watershed in our relations -- cooperation that would have been unthinkable in the recent past."

Transcripts of his speech were made available by the Department of Defence here.

Gates had said the strategic landscape of Asia continues to evolve as new and re-emerging centres of power -- from China and Russia, to India and Indonesia -- combined with other shifts, give impetus to the search for a new security architecture in the region.