At a congressional hearing last week, ranking Democratic Senator Ben Cardin hoped that prime minister Modi’s visit would also pave the way for greater understanding of Washington’s position on Pakistan, the Dawn reports.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended a function here during which Indian idols lying in the usa have been returned to India.
“But, we are also keen to welcome larger number of Swiss visitors to India”, he said.
After the Modi-Sheikh Tamim talks in the Qatari capital on Sunday, New Delhi and Doha issued a joint statement, saying: “The two leaders highlighted the need to isolate the sponsors and supporters of terrorism and agreed that urgent action against all such entities, which support terrorism and use it as an instrument of policy, must be taken”.
Furthermore, the US relationship with Pakistan continues to loom large over India-US ties, with New Delhi looking warily at Washington’s supplies of aid and armaments – such as F-16 fighter jets – to Islamabad.
The daily said the U.S. is encouraging the rise of India as a giant Asian partner to balance China, and India is trying to accelerate its economy with an injection of investment from American companies.
Speaking to a journalist, U.S. ambassador to India Richard Verma had a year ago stressed on how the closeness between the two was very “real”.
On his part, Schneider-Ammann said that Switzerland was “interested” in India’s membership.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his talks with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Amman, raised the issue of black money and tax evasion by Indians to which the latter offered to extend the level of cooperation.
Modi thanked US President Barack Obama for returning the Indian idols. The pair had won the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open in 20.
Getting India to “join” the Paris accords is one of the possible outcomes of Modi’s meeting with Obama this month. The grouping will take up India’s application in its plenary meetings on June 9 in Vienna and June 24 in Seoul.
India, which is already abiding by the NSG Guidelines without being a member, has been reaching out to all representatives across the 48 member nations to support India’s case.
Washington revoked Modi’s visa in 2005 arguing that he had not done enough to stop communal violence in 2002 when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat.
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The other big item on the agenda was the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states-Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland-and India that has been stuck since 2008. In fact, it has backed Pakistan’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. In those what are the opportunities for India and United States to be able to work together to address those challenges in a way that would meet India’s national interest and of course would be of interest to the USA, ” said Singh.
