Washington: The US has "an excellent relationship with India across the board", a US official said without getting into details of what new initiatives may be in the offing in President Barack Obama`s second term.
"On the question of continuity and policy, you know that we have an excellent relationship with India across the board," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said when asked about what Obama`s re-election would mean for India.
"In terms of what might come in a second term in terms of new initiatives, I`m not going to foreshadow that until the president`s had a chance to think through that and articulate those things himself," she said.
The US was "continuing to try to settle the remaining issues" in their landmark civil nuclear deal with India even as it was "also in contact with some of these allied countries who are also pursuing nuclear deals with India", she said.
"There`s, in our view, enough work here for everybody, and we all have the same concerns about the way this goes forward safely and fairly," Nuland said. "So we`re in contact with each other."
The issues that US still needed to "work through other participants also have in terms of liability, cooperation, et cetera," she said. "So they have to be worked out."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Nuland said, had spoken to India`s new External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and told him she looked forward to working with him and having a chance to meet at an appropriate time.
Congratulating the minister on his new appointment, she also thanked him for his leadership in the strategic dialogue, and also for India`s support for accession to the Indian Ocean Rim-Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) and for hosting the recent US-India-Japan trilateral.
IANS
