Washington, Oct 28: The United States of America (USA) is keen to move forward on key defence agreements with India, said a top American diplomat Alice G Wells. The US is also keen to share classified data and sell F-16 and F-18 fighter jets to New Delhi, she added. The Trump administration in September told Congress that it “strongly supports” the sale of fighter jets to India and added that the proposal can take the US-India ties to next level.
Alice G Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for the South and Central Asian Affairs, said that F-16 or the F-18 fighter jets will help create a defence technology partnership, and will also create jobs for Americans at home.
Wells had accompanied Rex Tillerson on his just-concluded trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. “This was an extremely friendly, very wide-ranging dialogue on how we can partner together on the strategic relationship that we think is going to define the rest of the 21st century,” Wells said. “Tillerson’s visit to Gandhi Smriti was very moving and was a touchstone for what unites – that this relationship is very much the one built on values,” she added.
“We want to build on the June visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the President (Donald Trump). We’d like to deepen the military-to-military cooperation that has moved very quickly; over the last decade we’ve gone from zero to 15 billion in defence sales. We’d like to expand the bilateral trade and investment dimension of the relationship. We have about $115 billion in trade, $40 billion in bilateral investment,” Wells said.
During his India visit, Tillerson focused on how they can promote regional stability, she said. “In the South Asia strategy, we have given an important role to India on helping stabilise Afghanistan economically and to build its human resource capacity,” she said.
In November, Donald Trump‘s daughter Ivanka Trump will attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit.
Quotes taken from PTI.
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