'India-US relationship strong and will remain so'

The relationship between India and the US is strong and will remain so, under either the Republican and Democratic party rule, former US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill said here on Friday.

"There is a strong India-US relationship. This will remain strong... But the problem is the bandwidth," Blackwill said here at the Hindustan Times leadership summit 2015.

"It depends on how much time will the next US President have to work on India-US relations," he added.

Blackwill, who represented the Republican party on the panel at the summit, also said the US-China relationship were getting worse.

On the challenges that would be faced by the next US president, he said: "The next president has a dangerous and a rocky world to travel."

Another panellist, Daniel Kurtz, who was an adviser on then secretary of state Hillary Clinton's policy planning staff, said: "When it comes to Afghanistan, it is going to be a challenge in the coming years for the next US president."