US President Barack Obama on Friday shared India’s acute concern over renewed acts of terrorism even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear that Pakistan continues to remain the epicentre of terrorism and said expectations from his upcoming meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif needed to be toned down.
“Our hearts go out” to the victims, Obama said in an obvious reference to the recent terror attacks in J&K that killed 10 people, and touched on the wide-ranging security cooperation between India and US on battling terrorism.
After their bilateral summit meeting, the third in the last four years, the PM, who has been under intense pressure to scrub his plans to meet Sharif in New York over the weekend, underscored that the epicentre of terrorism affecting India still lies in Pakistan.
Both Obama and Singh dwelt on the importance of the growing relationship between India and US. Although Corporate America has launched a shrill campaign against India’s discriminatory trade policies, Obama pointedly stated that bilateral trade has expanded by 50 per cent in recent years.
While a joint statement was still awaited at the time of writing, Obama made a reference to the kickstart for implementation of the civil nuclear deal, in a clear allusion to the pre-early works agreement between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India and the US firm, Westinghouse.
Prime Minister Singh, in his remarks, appreciated Obama for giving diplomacy a chance in Syria and Iran, stressing that India fully supports the peace initiative in the Gulf region, where six million Indians live.