Jaishankar upbeat about India-US ties, says there is interest in taking relationship forward

Washington: Upbeat about the future of the India-US ties, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday said clearly there is an interest in the new Trump Administration in taking this relationship forward.

“Special Envoy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is naturally treated very well,” Jaishankar told a group of Indian reporters when asked about the front row seat that he was given during the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States on January 20.

Jaishankar, 70, was here at the invitation of the US government and represented India at the inauguration ceremony.

Over the last three days, the minister said he had an opportunity to meet about half a dozen cabinet ministers of the Trump Administration.

He had a bilateral meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and attended the Quad ministerial meeting along with his counterparts from Australia, Japan and the US, the first of the Trump Administration.

“Clearly there is an interest in taking the relationship forward. Now the exact mechanics of it, as and when we have something to tell you we'd be happy to share with you. But I do remind you that the prime minister had a very early phone call with President Trump and that I had come last month and made the initial contact with the NSA. So, it should give you a direction in which the relationship is going,” Jaishankar said.

“I would say, one, it was very clear that the Trump Administration was keen to have India present at the inaugural itself and they're clearly prioritising the bilateral relationship.

"Secondly, I think in the meetings I had, it was also evident that they would like to build on the foundation of the relationship, a foundation, which the first Trump Administration also contributed a lot to building. But President Trump and Prime Minister Modi at that time took a number of initiatives and we have seen that mature in many ways,” he said.

“And the third impression was with regard to Quad, again, a very strong sense that the current administration would reciprocate our desire as well to take the Quad further to intensify its activities,” he said, noting that the Quad itself was restarted in 2017 when Donald Trump was the president.

Jaishankar said he also flagged some concerns which are very widespread in India about delays in visas and the relationship is not well served if it takes that many days for people to get a visa because ultimately those visa delays do impact business, they do affect tourism.

“They in many ways constrain the people to people interactions, which is the foundation of our relationship. When I spoke about the strong trust between us, I think we would like to translate the trust more and more into an actual partnership,” he said.

Briefing on his bilateral meetings with Rubio and Waltz, he said: “Between us and the Trump Administration, we approach the world both with a clear sense of our national interest belief.” “We have a very strong degree of trust today between India and the United States. A very high level of convergence of our interests and a sense that while we serve our national interest, while we build our bilateral partnership, definitely on regional issues and global issues, there is a lot of good that we can do,” he said.

Jaishankar said there was consensus between them that “we need to be bolder, we need to be bigger, we need to be more ambitious. The interactions between us should be more intensive”.

“The two countries want to promote the ease of building the relationship. How do you make business mobility, education, technology, defence, security? How do you make it easier to do between two countries who would like to do it?

"But there are the burden of regulations and the complexity of processes. I did see understanding and recognition that we need to make this process much smoother than it has in the past so that it actually enables us to achieve our shared objective really of this bolder, bigger, more ambitious relationship when it came to various regulations and processes,” he said. “Whether it's technology, whether it's an industrial partnership, education, defence, security, really we are open in all domains, I think, today the enthusiasm and the levels of comfort are very strong between India and the United States,” the minister said.