NEW DELHI // Trade, nuclear energy and terrorism were the main focus of talks between Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and US secretary of state John Kerry, on the sidelines of a major investment summit in the western state of Gujurat that ended on Monday.
Mr Kerry, who arrived in India on Sunday before for a two-day visit, hailed the “incredible possibilities” for economic cooperation between the two countries.
“What has become very clear is that this is a moment when the world’s oldest democracy and world’s largest democracy are really beginning to capitalise on our connections to one another and on the promises we have been talking about for some period of time,” Mr Kerry said on Monday.
The US secretary of state had come to India to speak at the Vibrant Gujarat summit in the state capital of Gandhinagar, and to lay the groundwork for president Barack Obama’s two-day visit later this month. Mr Obama will be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade on January 26.
“President Obama is very excited to be the first US president to be honoured as a chief guest during the Republic Day commemoration,” Mr Kerry said. “He’s also the first sitting American president to be visiting India twice. We think the fact that it’s the second visit after the very successful visit of prime minister [Modi] to Washington really says a lot about the value that both countries place on the criticality of our relationship.”
Mr Kerry pointed out that US investments in India had risen to $28bn from US$2.4 billion (Dh8.8bn) in 2000.
In his speech to the summit on Sunday, Mr Kerry said that he was impressed, he said, with the “palpable entrepreneurial interest” in the country and with Mr Modi’s plan to supply uninterrupted electricity to every home in India.
“There are immense possibilities for global investors in India,” Mr Modi said in his speech on Sunday. “The process of development we are taking up is not incremental We are planning to take a quantum leap. It is not limited to one sector or region, it is truly unlimited. And we want to do things in a cleaner and greener way.”
He also promised that the US would “work with India to reach a landmark climate change agreement in Paris at the end of this year.”
Crucially, the US state department has also hinted that the two countries might finally make progress on the long-dormant civilian nuclear deal.
Signed in October 2008, the deal was intended to facilitate US assistance with India’s civilian nuclear energy sector, in return for Indian assurances that its civilian and military nuclear facilities would be separated, and that its civilian facilities would be placed under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But progress on the deal has long been held up by issues of liability — specifically, over the question of how much responsibility an American company would bear in the event of accidents.
It has been a stalemate, said G Balachandran, a consulting fellow at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis.
The Nuclear Liability Act, passed by the Indian parliament in 2010, sets down clauses outlining compensation and legal obligations deemed too high by commercial American nuclear suppliers. “The liability bill is unlikely to be amended, and with it, there’s very little freedom to do anything” to make investments in in India’s nuclear sector, Mr Balachandran said. “It’s difficult to reconcile.”
The two countries have repeatedly pursued negotiations over this sticking point.
"We are working on the civil nuclear liability issue," a US state department official travelling with Mr Kerry told Reuters. "The goal is to have very concrete and tangible things that we can show forward movement on when president Obama and prime minister Modi meet, including on climate change."
Addressing terrorism in the country, Mr Kerry said he “understood India’s concerns” about the threat of extremists operating from Pakistani soil.
“We stand together not just in anger and outrage but in solidarity and commitment in confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much, and that has always united our countries: freedom,” he said on Sunday.
Mr Kerry flew from Gujarat to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad on Monday afternoon.
On the way to the Ahmedabad airport, not far from Gandhinagar, two of the cars in Mr Kerry’s motorcade were involved in a minor accident. There were no injuries, a state department spokesperson said.
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
