By IANS,
Washington : The US and India are both hoping that President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would meet on the sidelines of next month’s summit of Group of 20 leading economies in London.
“We both hope there would be a meeting between the two leaders,” Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said at a press conference here Wednesday after concluding the first high-level interaction with the new Obama administration.
“We are looking forward to it,” he said, provided the prime minister, who is recovering from heart surgery, is permitted by his doctors to visit London.
Menon said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton too had expressed her desire to visit India soon.
Refuting suggestions that the Obama administration was ignoring India, he said there was no question of anyone ignoring India, for obviously everyone he had met had strongly supported the India-US relatioship.
“Both sides are satisfied that so much has been done and want to do much more, moving forward rapidly,” Menon said pointing to the keenness for a meeting between Obama and Manmohan Singh and Clinton’s desire to visit India.
The upcoming G-20 meeting provides an opportunity to address the global economic crisis. It also makes India-US cooperation on the issue more significant, he said.