New Delhi : The “very successful” visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US helped establish a “good personal rapport” with President Barack Obama that is important to take bilateral relations forward, two top American senators said here Thursday.
Senators Angus King from Maine, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, and Tim Kaine from Virginia, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, are in India days after Modi’s US sojourn.
While it is important to ink deals and agreements “but without a good personal chemistry it is difficult to take relations forward”, King told newspersons.
He said the Sep 26-30 US visit of Modi, his first after becoming prime minister in May, helped establish a personal equation with Obama.
Kaine mentioned Obama escorted Modi around the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington Sep 30.
The senators met National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, some members of parliament, as well as leading strategic commentators Wednesday.
They are to leave for Mumbai to pay their respects to victims of the 26/11 terror attack.
To a question on the ongoing border firing between India and Pakistan, the senators said they are “very troubled” by it and hoped that tensions de-escalate soon.
To another query, Kaine said that America had broached the subject of the US-led fight against the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during talks with Modi.
He said the US appreciated the Indian prime minister terming the IS as a “threat to humanity” and that India “has felt the threat of extremism like the US” but what role India can play is a totally a “domestic decision”, he added.