Modi's US trip a successful visit: Menon

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US and his meeting with President Barack Obama was successful, former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon has said, insisting that the outcome shows the progress made in the bilateral ties during the last 10 years.

In his maiden interaction with an audience here after demitting office, Menon said the success of Modi's visit was reflected in the joint India-US statement issued after his meeting with Obama last week.

The statement, he noted, reflected the wide gamut of relationship that has evolved between the two countries over the past one decade.

"On the visit and India-US relations, it was clearly a good visit...for me the key is the joint statement...it really shows how far the relationship has come in the last 10 years or so and how far we progressed," Menon said while speaking at the Brookings Institute, a prestigious US-based think tank.

Observing that the new Indian government is attached to a very firm and strong relationship with the US, Menon said, Modi on his maiden USA visit as the Prime Minister was very active on public diplomacy, which was really quite impressive.

"I do not think, Prime Ministers visits actually produce nickel and dime outcome.
I do not think that’s the purpose. The purpose is to push relationship as a whole forward. And I think, that was achieved," Menon said when asked to comment on Prime Minister Modi's five-day visit to the US. "For me it was a good visit," he said.

Responding to questions, he refuted the notion that India US relationship was floundering before Modi's visit.

"If it was, you could not have produced a joint statement of depth and breadth that we saw last week. It was certainly a good visit in several senses," he said.