Washington, Jun 6: Declaring that India is destined to be a nation of global influence, the US has said bilateral ties are moving towards “full maturity”, encompassing cooperation in areas like defence, climate change and energy as well as on nuclear and regional geo-political issues.
    “Obviously, India is on a path of ascendancy. It is destined to be a nation of global influence,” US National Security Adviser Gen (Retd) James Jones told PTI here.His remarks follow US President Barack Obama’s statement that India is a rising and responsible global power “indispensable” to a future American strategy.
     Jones said it is extremely important that countries like India and the United States have “a national affinity” for one another as expressed by the strong friendship between the two sides, including their heads of State.
     “We have converging values, we both want better lives for our citizens and our children, we want to eliminate the scourge of terrorism, we would like to have a better climate, a better management of our fragile planet and nations of influence can shape that globally. “When there are two countries like ours that are working together along those lines that has a huge effect in other parts of the world for the better,” Jones said. On that scale of things, the recent successful Strategic Dialogue, the first between India and the US at the Cabinet-level co-chaired by External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his counterpart Hillary Clinton, is a very encouraging development, he said.

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