By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India has given a new momentum to India-US relationship, but differences over climate change and trade talks may cloud their “strategic partnership”, mainline US media suggests.
“The message Clinton sought to deliver was clear: the Obama administration wants to carry forward the momentum in bilateral relations gathered during the George W. Bush years,” Time magazine said.
“But as a near war of words over climate change showed, there is much ground to cover between rhetoric and reality, and the fledgling ‘strategic partnership’ is not likely to be an easy one,” it said
“The irony of the Indo-US strategic partnership remains that while the US may urge India to become a global power, neither country is ready for that to happen,” Time said pointing to differences over negotiations over the non-proliferation treaty, climate change and manufactured-goods tariffs at the WTO.
The Wall Street Journal hoped “the Administration was paying attention to India’s environment minister (Jairam Ramesh) when he told Clinton a thing or two about climate policy.”
“There is still serious scientific debate about the causes, effects and possible solutions for climate change,” it said. “But if President Obama is determined to tackle the issue anyway, he could do worse than listen to what Ramesh said.”
“By and large, the Clinton visit revealed an India ready to deepen ties with the US,” the Christian Science Monitor said noting that “in a sign of Mr. Obama’s global agenda to look beyond traditional American allies, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be the first foreign leader to receive an official red-carpet state visit to the Obama White House.
“If Obama is true to his vision, he won’t wait too long to travel to India after Mr. Singh’s November visit. That gesture would help cement a partnership long overdue between the world’s two largest democracies,” the daily said.
Writing in Forbes, Sumit Ganguly, a Visiting Scholar at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, said “the Obama administration has yet to match the lofty rhetoric of the Bush administration when it comes to spelling out a vision for Indo-US relations.”
But with “Secretary Clinton having spent five intense days in India, one can only hope that the Obama administration will now see India in all its facets and appreciate its growing importance to the US.”
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])