"Pakistan must be dissuaded from using terrorism as a state policy, and part of the US engagement with Pakistan should be focused on that result," says Ed Royce, senior Republican lawmaker.

"Read my lips," said Richard Holbrooke, special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, "I am not working on that problem," when asked by a Pakistani journalist if the Obama administration was 'serious to appoint any adviser to resolve this issue,' since as the latter contended, "We all know that deep down, there is no solution of Afghanistan and the South Asia problem, without resolving the Kashmir issue that is controlled by Indian government."

"Indeed, nearly all of the jihadi groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, LeT, and others have joined together in an extended terrorist network that shares the same goals, including destabilising Afghanistan and destroying the Pakistani state," said Congressman Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

American Congressman Ed Royce, a ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the senior-most minority member on the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Nonproliferation, who was part of the Congressional leadership that met with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh during his recent visit to Washington, is disappointed that the United States-India civilian nuclear deal wasn't completed to make it the signature highlight of the Obama-Singh summit.

As part of efforts to convince Pakistan to abandon its policy of using extremist elements as a strategic tool, the US has warned it that there is "no good terrorist" whom it can count on and asked it to take more steps against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.

Acknowledging that India is a big player in the region, a top US military leader has said that the relationship between India and Pakistan is critical for the stability in the region.

M K Bhadrakumar on what the US and India should do to stabilise Afghanistan and rein in rogue elements in Pakistan.

South Asia experts have called the recent Obama-Singh meet a success, going by the positive signals given by both sides in all major areas of cooperation, both bilateral and multilateral.

Scores of Indian American politicians, administration officials, media personalities and activists were among the 320 guests at the first state dinner of the Barack Obama presidency in honour of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Gurcharan Kaur

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday thanked US lawmakers for their enormous support to the historic civilian nuclear deal, which was signed between India and the United States last year, thus ending decades of nuclear apartheid against New Delhi.

US Congressman Ed Royce, a ranking Republican on the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee, has warned the Obama administration against undoing all the Bush administration's hard work in developing closer ties with India, by coveting China at the expense of New Delhi.

Christine Fair, who infuriated New Delhi when she alleged that India was meddling in Balochistan, has been offered the India portfolio in the Obama administration.

The US Congress has urged the Sri Lankan government to expedite rehabilitation of internally displaced Tamil civilians from military-guarded camps and begin the process of political reconciliation.

The Reverend J Jon Bruno, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, California, was awarded the Hindu American Foundation's annual Mahatma Gandhi Award for the Advancement of Religious Pluralism at the HAF's Sixth Capitol Hill reception in early October.

US President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law on Wednesday, the Kerry-Lugar bill for US $ 7.5 billion aid to Pakistan after two powerful Congressional committees issue an "explanatory statement" addressing concerns of its opponents, mainly the Pakistan Army.

Kerry, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who last week stood side-by-side with Qureshi and declared there are no conditions attached to the aid and that the bill in no way impinges on Pakistan's sovereignty, reiterated these assertions and also out a lengthy fact sheet which he said, separates "myth from fact on the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009."

The attack on the Pakistan Army headquarters in Rawalpindi reportedly saved two top officers from being sacked for creating misunderstanding between the Army and the President House, according to a Pakistani daily.

President Barack Obama has sent the report on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal to the US Congress, the White House said on Friday.

Congressman Gary Ackerman, New York Democrat, and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who last week slammed the Congressional passage of the massive economic and military largesse to Pakistan to the tune of $1.5 billion annually over five years, as the House dutifully fell in line with the Kerry-Lugar bill passed by the Senate last week tripling the aid to Islamabad, has denounced the Pakistani military's hostility to this aid because it contains some cond

President Barack Obama has sent the report on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal to the US Congress, the White House said today.

'The teachings of Gandhi, the philosophy of passive resistance and nonviolence, and also taught by Martin Luther King Jr, inspired hundreds and thousands and millions of citizens in America, and helped to free and liberate not just a people, but a nation,' says US Congressman John Lewis, a close friend of Dr King.

The voice vote comes a week after Senate passed the bill unanimously. The Bicameral Legislation now goes to US President Barack Obama for his signature.

Shrugging aside the recent reports of Pakistan illegally modifying the United States-supplied harpoon missiles to target India and former President Pervez Musharraf's revelations that he diverted the massive American military aid provided to Pakistan to fight the war on terror to the eastern border to bolster his country's defenses for a potential convention conflict with India, the US Senate passed a massive $7.5 billion economic and military largesse to Pakistan.

Though the Indian caucus in the Obama administration is concerned over the recent reports concerning Pakistan's funds being used against India, it may be unable to bring any changes in the Kerry-Lugar bill that has assured Pakistan of USD 1.5 billion on an annual basis for five years.

Congressman Joe Wilson, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, the erstwhile GOP co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, angrily shouted "You lie," stunning his fellow lawmakers, including his own Republican colleagues, and interrupting President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on his proposed health care reform.

The United States' nonproliferation lobby is apparently relishing the controversy ignited by erstwhile Defense and Research Development Organization scientist K Santhanam that the May 1998 Pokhran thermonuclear tests were not a full success implying that India needs to test again.

The New York Times report that Pakistan illegally modified the Harpoon anti-ship missile provided by the United States apparently to bolster its conventional weaponry against India, has embarrassed the Obama administration and Senators John F Kerry and Richard Lugarjust as Washington is poised to provide Islamabad with a massive economic and military largesse of $ 7.5 billion over five years

Marking a historic trip to Myanmar, a senior United States lawmaker on Saturday met pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi as well as the country's military ruler Than Shew and secured the release of an American, who had been jailed for secretly visiting the residence of the detained leader. Democrat Senator Jim Webb became the first senior US official to meet the reclusive Myanmar general in the capital Naypyidaw.

Just two more working days, August 6 and 7, and the Budget session of the Parliament comes to a close.

Terrorist groups operating from Pakistani soil have played a "very serious role" not just in attacks in India but also in Pakistan, a senior British lawmaker said on Monday.

United States Congressman Dan Burton, Indiana Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who was in the 1980s and 1990s India's bete-noire on Capitol Hill, after a considerable hiatus when he took a sabbatical against castigating India, seems to have had a relapse, this time at the urging of the Kashmiri American Council and the pro-Pakistan lobby.

The report submitted by Obama on Monday -- which is the first one given to the US Congress by a President as required by the legislation signed into law last October by then President George W Bush, is one in a series of determinations required to be provided to lawmakers on the implementation of the Act, which details India's actions from IAEA safeguards to other non-proliferation commitments.

About 1,400 people die every week due to water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, at the vast "internment camp" set up in northern Sri Lanka to house Tamil war refugees in an indication of the poor state of affairs of the displaced people, a media report said on Friday.

Less than a fortnight left for her first trip to India as the Secretary of State, Clinton had a breakfast meeting with more than a dozen top Congressional leaders from both Democratic and Republican parties on Wednesday, coming from both the chambers of the Congress -- the House of Representative and the Senate.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the Budget for 2009-10 on July 6. Following is the Budget Speech of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee:

Ahead of Mahatma Gandhi's 140th birth anniversary in October, a resolution has been introduced in the US House of Representatives to recognize Gandhi's 'visionary leadership that enhanced the rapidly deepening friendship between the United States and India.'

Robert O Blake, the new Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, making his debut before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday, said Secretary of State Hillary's Clinton's trip to India next month will be a tangible manifestation of the Obama Administration's commitment to take the Indo-US relationship to the next level.

Pakistan has moved one step closer to receiving massive American economic and military largesse -- reminiscent of the billions of dollars it received during the Reagan and George W Bush Administrations when military dictators Mohammad Zia-ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf respectively were in charge -- to the tune of $1.5 billion annually over five years, when the Senate-Lugar aid bill steamrolled through the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 16-0.

United States lawmakers, who attended the annual Sikh American Heritage Dinner on Capitol Hill organized by the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, pledged to support the community's efforts to serve in the armed forces without compromising their religious principles.

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday proposing to triple the US non-military aid to Pakistan to US $ 1.5 billion per annum, but imposes strict accountability conditions on Islamabad with regard to its fight against terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation.