US says it wants India to have good relations with China too

Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India, the US says it has a very broad relationship with India and wants New Delhi to have good relationships with all the countries in the region, including China.

"We're all looking forward to welcoming Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi to Washington," State Department spokesperson Marie Harf told foreign media Monday when asked how the US viewed Xi's India visit ahead of Modi's upcoming US trip.

Modi will have summit meetings with President Barack Obama Sep 29 and 30 and would have "a number of meetings, I'm sure, with my colleagues at the State Department as well", she said.

"Our relationship with India really is a very broad one where we talk about a whole range of topics," Harf said when asked by a Chinese correspondent about US expectations about the bilateral meeting between Obama and Modi.

"And I think that we want India to have good relationships with all the countries in the region, including China," she said.

"This is a broad relationship we have with India in a whole host of areas: certainly security," she said.

"I'm sure we'll talk a lot about security issues -- environmental issues, energy issues, economic issues."

"And in a lot of these areas we have overlapping interests," Harf said.

"So we certainly are welcoming the prime minister to Washington, have a full agenda, which I think we'll probably flesh out a little bit more as we get closer to his visit."

"But suffice to say I think we will touch on a number of topics" including "Afghanistan, which obviously is important to a lot of people, but to the Indians. And I think that will certainly be a topic of conversation."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)