The US President, Mr Barack Obama, and the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, have broad agreement on the steps that need to be taken to spur the global economic growth, the White House has said ahead of the next week’s G-20 Summit.
Both Mr Obama and Dr Singh would be attending the next week’s G-20 summit at Los Cabos in Mexico. However, no bilateral meeting between the two has been scheduled.
“I think they (Obama and Singh) are in broad agreement about the need for steps to promote global growth, about the need to have, again, European leaders use the G-20 as an opportunity to discuss their plans around the Euro Zone,” Deputy National Security Advisor, Mr Ben Rhodes, told reporters.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr Rhodes said Mr Obama spoke to Dr Singh a day earlier over phone ahead of the G-20 Summit.
“They talked about the G—20 agenda. So I think that call was very much about coordinating efforts leading into the G-20,” he said yesterday.
The US has continued its strategic dialogue with India that runs across a range of different sectors, he said.
“We want to see deeper strategic cooperation between our two countries, for instance as we deal with the future security of South Asia and Afghanistan as the United States draws down there,” Mr Rhodes said.
“We’d like to see deeper economic cooperation, including increased US exports and commercial ties with India. And that’s something that was discussed in recent days and the President is personally very supportive of those efforts,” the top Obama aide said in response to a question.
“I’d just say we’ve been supportive of efforts within India to crack down on corruption. The G-20 also has been a forum that we’ve used to lift up the issue of corruption so that countries can share best practices and join cooperative efforts to combat corruption,” he said.