Clinton discusses India trip with Congressional leaders

With just "about 11 days or so" to go for her India visit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has met top Congressional leaders to talk about where this "very important relationship" and "strategic partnership" is going.

Clinton met top Congressional leaders including heads of the Senate and House foreign relations panels, Senator John Kerry and Howard Berman, over breakfast Wednesday for an exchange of views before she goes out "on this important trip", State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

In what he called a "broad exchange", Clinton "took the opportunity, of course, to highlight the growing strategic partnership that we have with India and our broad bilateral agenda".

"We have a very important relationship with India. It's a strategic partnership," Kelly said, noting that Clinton herself had said Tuesday "that she's really looking forward to her trip".

What she wanted to do was to give these senior Congressional leaders who deal with foreign affairs "an idea of what our latest thinking is on where this relationship is going, and talk about her trip, and then, of course, get the benefit of their views as well before she goes out on this important trip.

"It gave her an opportunity to preview her trip to India and also get some feedback from these senior congressional leaders on our views on India and on the trip."

Later Clinton met a number of senior foreign policy experts from various think tanks and related academic institutions "for an exchange of views on events going on," Kelly said without naming the experts.

Asked if she raised issues like nuclear sales and possible defence contracts with New Delhi, he said: "Well, I think it was a pretty broad discussion, but I'm not prepared to talk about details besides previewing her trip and talking about a number of issues on the bilateral agenda."

Kelly said he was unaware of what papers still remained to be signed to implement the India-US civil nuclear deal or whether the issue would come up during Clinton's visit.

"I mean, we have a very broad agenda with India," he said. "Her trip is in about 11 days or so. I'm just not going to predict what's going to come up during that trip."

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

Last updated on Jul 9^th, 2009 at 10:14 am IST--IANS