Manmohan, Bush may meet July 18

Last September, when Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh met US President George W Bush for the first time on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the latter asked him if he had ever been to the White House Oval Office.

When the prime minister bashfully answered in the negative, Bush immediately extended him an invitation to visit Washington, DC, as his guest, to be shown around the White House and to engage in a summit meeting in the Oval Office, followed by an extended interaction in the White House dining room between the two leaders and aides.

The American President's invitation will likely be realised July 18, when Dr Singh arrives in Washington for a three-day official visit.

Administration and diplomatic sources told rediff.com it was likely two or three agreements -- in energy, science and technology, and perhaps defense -- will be initialed to show the visit was more than purely symbolic and that there is tangible meat to the growing US-India strategic partnership as envisaged under the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership.

The prime minister is likely to meet with Congressional leaders, particularly a joint meeting with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee, and possibly address a joint session of the United States Congress.

He is expected to deliver a major address, which could be on India's economic growth and globalisation at a leading Washington think tank, maybe meet with the Indian-American community, and be hosted at a reception by the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans and the Friends of India in the Senate.

Over the past year, since he arrived in Washington, DC, Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen's focus has been to get the prime minister to take Bush up on his invitation to visit the White House and facilitate the president's visit to India later this year or in early 2006.

Sen -- who returned from New Delhi after meeting with the prime minister and Cabinet officials and leading members of the Opposition to discuss the growing US-India relations and the tangible manifestations that are now possible, including the sale and co-production of F-16 and F-18 fighter aircraft to India -- is expected to leave for India again early June to brief Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee who arrives in Washington June 27.

Mukherjee's visit, perhaps, could provide some indication to Washington that India is interested in some of the high-end aircraft it is willing to sell and co-produce with India and set the stage for the signing of an agreement of sorts on defense cooperation during the prime minister's visit.

Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, in providing some hint of a possible agreement that could be signed during the prime minister's visit, spoke of the progress in setting up an India-US Energy panel co-chaired by the deputy chairman of India's Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

"We are also looking at other areas of cooperation, which could be promoted, for example, in the area of science and technology, where we have set up an Indo-US Working Group on Space," Saran, who was visiting Washington, DC, to prepare for Dr Singh's visit said.

He said he had informed Bush administration officials he had met with -- his diplomatic counterpart Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Philip Zelikow, counselor and confidant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Deputy National Security Adviser J D Crouch, and Defense Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith -- of the Kelkar Committee report that is "looking at a fairly major program of privatizing defense production in India and this opens up many opportunities again for cooperation on the defense side and that is something worth looking at."

"India provides a very good platform for outsourcing of some component manufacture or doing some joint production," the foreign secretary said.

A detailed version of this report was first published in India Abroad, the newspaper owned by rediff.com