Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

The White House today confirmed that United States President Barack Obama had spoken to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, touching upon the “the successful American action against Osama Bin Laden.” It was their first call since the killing of Osama on Sunday, May 1.

The two leaders also took the opportunity to go over key bilateral issues, including reviewing progress in implementing the many crosscutting initiatives launched during Mr. Obama’s historic visit to India last November.

While the second round of the Strategic Dialogue that was initially slated for the spring of 2011 stands postponed due to elections in Indian states, the President and Prime Minister were said to have talked spoken about the wide-ranging, minister-level talks.

In a statement the White House said, the two leaders re-affirmed their commitment to building a global, strategic partnership, including defence cooperation, and looked forward to the upcoming meetings of the Strategic Dialogue, the Homeland Security Dialogue, the Joint Space Working Group, and the High-Technology Cooperation Group.”

The Homeland Security Dialogue assumes particular significance for in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008. In 2010 Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram had visited the U.S. and interacted with different divisions of the U.S. homeland security apparatus, focusing on issues such as megacity policing.

The Joint Space Working Group and the High-Technology Cooperation Group are also key components of the bilateral relationship and last year played an important role in seeing through policy reforms in areas such as the U.S. Entities List for export control restrictions.

Following numerous rounds of consultations through these and other groups Mr. Obama’s visit last year saw the removal of institutions such as the Indian Space Research Organisation from the restricted list.