Briefing by Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran
Thank you very much for coming this afternoon on what I know is an extremely busy day for all of you and a very special day. But I thought before the President of United States comes to visit India perhaps it might be worthwhile for me to share with you what we have in store for the visit.
This is the first visit of President Bush to India. This is only the fifth visit by a US President to India. There is a great deal of anticipation regarding this visit. Of course, a very warm welcome awaits President Bush and for good reason because here is a President who has been personally very supportive in advancing India-US ties and particularly giving a certain strategic dimension to India-US relations.
President Bush will be accompanied by Mrs. Laura Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will also be a member of the delegation, (as also) Chief of Staff Andrew Card, National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, and the US Trade Representative Rob Portman. What we have on the agenda are delegation-level talks with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister will be hosting a luncheon in honour of both President and Mrs. Bush. There will also be a banquet by the President, the traditional banquet, at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. There will be, of course, meetings with the Chairman of the UPA, Shrimati Sonia Gandhi and also with the Leader of the Opposition Mr. L.K. Advani.
President Bush and Prime Minister will also be receiving the much-awaited report from the Indian and American CEOs. If you recall, when Prime Minister had visited Washington last year in July, the two leaders had set up a CEOs forum with ten of the top industry and business leaders on the US side and ten similar top leaders of Indian business and industry on our side. This Forum has been meeting and also they have been working on a common report to the two leaders on how the economic and trade relationship between India and the US could be taken forward, in particular focusing attention on the investment aspect, particularly for example the areas of interest to us like investment in infrastructure and certainly in high technology areas. So, there will be a presentation of this report to the two leaders.
Prior to that there will be also separately a meeting between the National Economic Advisor to the US President, Allan Hubbard and Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia who is the Deputy-Chairman of our Planning Commission and also the US Trade Representative. The Trade Representative, of course, will be having also a separate meeting with the Minister for Commerce and Industry. So, this will provide during the visit an occasion for the economic dialogue, the India-US Economic Dialogue, to also have a meeting and also the US Trade Representative and our Minister for Commerce and Industry to have a meeting in a sense to add to the CEOs Forum report, in terms of our economic trade and investment objectives. So, there will be a very strong economic and trade content to this visit.
In the itinerary that the President has there will be a visit to Hyderabad. It will be a brief visit but it will be a visit which will have both substantive as well as some symbolic significance. The visit to Hyderabad will include a visit to the N.G. Ranga Agricultural University. As you know, we have been working with the United States on a very ambitious Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture whose objective is nothing short of kicking off a second Green Revolution in India, a phase of modernization, a phase of upgradation, a phase of commercialization of Indian agriculture.
Here in Hyderabad there will be an occasion to the President to look at what India has achieved in the field of agriculture in the past several years. It has been a very impressive story of success, a success which we can now build upon to bring about a second Green Revolution in the country. I think he would have a chance also to interact with Indian farmers. There will also be an occasion to interact with some of the self-help groups, especially of women who have been involved in many self-help activities, at the N.G. Ranga University. So, that is one part of the Hyderabad agenda.
Then there will be an occasion for the President to interact with young entrepreneurs at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. As you know, Hyderabad has now been developing into a multi-industry kind of center of excellence of high technology. This would be an occasion for the President to interact with some of the industry leaders in this metropolis.
When the President comes back from Hyderabad to Delhi, he will be addressing a representative gathering at Purana Quila at a function which is being hosted by the Indian apex organizations, business organizations. Essentially what the President is looking at is an address which will be his sort of main message to the people of India from the United States. So, this is in nutshell what the content of the visit would be.
As you know, this visit comes after the landmark visit of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to Washington last year in July. You are aware of the July 18 Joint Statement which was a very substantive agenda for India-US relations. Some aspects of that agenda have already been implemented and some are still a work in progress. Essentially the vision that was put forward for India-US relations was one of strategic partnership based on a convergence of interests in several areas as also shared values of democracy, recognition that our two countries’ need to work together to jointly address some very important global issues which are of mutual concern. These, of course, include certain strategic and security issues but they also include areas like energy, agriculture, science and technology, environment, health, counter terrorism, trade and commerce, space-related activities as well as high technology. So, a very extensive and a rather substantial agenda had been put forward for India-US relations.
During President Bush’s visit to India there will be occasion to review how far we have gone in terms of fulfilling some of the elements of the agenda. As I said, we have actually made progress in several areas. Since July 18, 2005 the two countries have been engaged in a rather intensive dialogue across the board to give substance to, and to give content to some of the ideas which were expressed in the Joint Statement. Civil Nuclear Energy is, of course, the area which has occupied a great deal of attention of our media as well as the US media. I can only report that we have managed to make considerable progress. We still have some distance to go. This is a complicated issue; a complex issue. Our effort has been not to leave unfinished business which could create difficulties for us later on. So we need a certain degree of clarity on our mutual commitments. We need to make sure that there are no ambiguities which may create difficulties for us in the future. So, as I said, we still have a short distance to cover. If necessary we will continue the negotiations beyond the forthcoming visit.
We also had the mandate given to the CEOs forum that they should produce a document with very concrete recommendations, I understand that this report does have those concrete recommendations, which would be very useful to both our Governments in terms of our economic relationship. On the broader issue of economic cooperation, again there has been a great deal of work. Working Groups on some of the specific areas of cooperation have met. There has been video conferencing between the concerned departments in India and the United States. I am very happy to report that we can expect some important announcements as far as the energy initiative is concerned.
You would recall that in the Indo-US Energy Dialogue there is a Steering Committee which is headed by David Garman, Under Secretary in the Energy Department in the US by the Foreign Secretary in India and we have met twice. We met in December 2005 in Washington and then recently David Garman was here in New Delhi in February and we went over a number of areas where India and US could cooperate. For example, in working together on zero emission, coal-based thermal power plants. That is an area of great interest to us. We have talked how we could cooperate together in certain non-conventional energy sources. We have already been having in the past some cooperation between the two countries and things like bio fuels. We have been talking about the hydrogen fuel economy. These are areas which are of great promise for the future.
You would recall in this connection that the Joint Statement had also spoken about India’s participation in the International Thermo-Nuclear Experimental Research project. We are very happy to that that has become a reality. India is now a full participant in the ITER project. On the energy side we have in fact a very broad menu. There will be some important announcements, as I mentioned to you.
In terms of the agriculture knowledge initiative, again there has been a lot of interaction between the Indian side and the American side. Here also we have a very substantial menu relating to virtually every important aspect of agriculture, things like water management, introduction of new technologies into agriculture, very important area of post harvest management, and also of agricultural processing. Agricultural processing is a particularly important area for India because there is considerable amount of wastage. This is one area which cannot only bring great value addition to agriculture but also has great potential for employment creation. So, we are really looking at cooperation in areas which would have a very direct impact on a sector of India’s economy which still gives occupation to a very large part of our population. This is one of the areas which will be a key area for cooperation, long-term cooperation, between the two countries.
Then we have the high technology. The High Technology Cooperation Group met in November-December 2005. We have action plans on nano-technology, biotechnology, defence technology, as well as on IT. These work plans which have been developed will be implemented during the year. As a result of our efforts, licensing for high technology products has become much more liberal as well as predictable. A fairly important segment of the American high technology exports to India have been now freed from licensing requirements. Approval rates have climbed from about 80 per cent in the past to more than 90 per cent now. The licence processing time has also significantly dropped from about 44-45 days which used to be the average before to about 34 days now. So, there is a trend towards a more liberal high technology trade.
Here also we expect that there would be announcement for further liberalization of high technology licences during the visit. Science and Technology agreement was signed, as you know, between our Minister of State for Science and Technology, the Secretary of State of the US in September 2005, this was a direct follow-up to the visit of Dr. Manmohan Singh to Washington. Both sides have regarded science and technology as really a critical area for cooperation between us. We are looking at broadening the framework of science and technology cooperation between the two sides, and provide greater and more predictable funding so that the two sides can undertake joint projects on a much more predictable and a longer-term basis. This is something which is also ready for announcement during the visit.
On space, we have significant progress. There has been cooperation on space launch, the inclusion of US payloads on India’s Chandrayan mission, the Moon Mission. These have been talked about in great detail and I think we are very near to making announcements in the space area.
Amongst other areas we have global issues such as clean development partnership. We have cooperation on pandemics like HIV-AIDS and Avian Flu. Avian Flu is something which is a very current challenge and we are certainly looking forward to working together with the US on this very important area as well as how do we build upon our previous experience in dealing with natural disasters and build up a framework of cooperation for responding to natural disasters. This is something which would also figure in the list of outcomes for the visit.
As you can see, there is a very substantial agenda for the visit. A very natural sort of taking forward of the initiatives which once announced in July last year and also building upon that base looking at a much broader relationship in virtually all the important areas which were identified then, as I said, a very significant dimension being the economic, trade and investment relationship.
We have no doubt that this would be a very successful visit and a visit which will really mark a further maturation and a further development of our strategic partnership with the US.
Thank you very much. I would be ready to take your questions.
