By IANS
New Delhi : Ahead of the meeting of national security advisors of India and the US in Washington next week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday called up President George W. Bush, hoping that their discussions would reinforce the strong bilateral relations.
"The two leaders expressed satisfaction at the strong India-US bilateral relations and spoke about the forthcoming discussions," a statement from the Prime Minister's Office said.
"They were of the view that these discussions will reinforce our strong bilateral relations. The prime minister and the US president also said they were looking forward to continuing their own discussions at their next meeting."
National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan is slated to meet his American counterpart Stephen Hadley in Washington to take forward the fresh proposal made by India in a bid to break the deadlock holding up signing of the bilateral agreement for civilian nuclear energy cooperation.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon will accompany Narayanan.
The last meeting between the prime minister and the US president was on the sidelines of the Outreach Summit of the G-8 at Heiligendamm in June.
India had then conveyed its willingness to step back to address US non-proliferation concerns by offering to create a fully safeguarded facility to store spent fuel.
The proposal was believed to have been earlier discussed by Narayanan and Hadley.
In an interaction with reporters last week, Manmohan Singh expressed optimism that the nuclear deal would be finalised before the end of the year.