India, US diplomats meet; terror, ties on agenda

India's Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao made her first foray to Washington, DC in her new avatar for meetings on Monday with her diplomatic counterpart William Burns, Deputy Secretary James Steinberg and Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero.

Rao, who arrived in New York on Sunday morning, boarded the Acela Express to Washington, DC the same day for an interaction with the senior State Department officials on the invitation of Burns, who had not met her earlier during his visit to New Delhi a week after the new government was constituted in India after the May elections.

At the time Rao was still in Beijing, serving out her last few days as Ambassador there before she was named the new Foreign Secretary.

After closeting herself with senior Indian embassy officials in her hotel suite at the Willard Intercontinental in Washington for internal briefings, Rao -- according to diplomatic and administration sources -- covered the entire gamut of bilateral relations.

She reviewed the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation and how to take it forward to cooperation in education between the two countries and opportunities for cooperation in clean and green technologies to further strengthening the already deep counter-terrorism and intelligence-sharing between the two countries..

Sources said that she and Burns also reviewed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's July trip to New Delhi and the five-pillar architecture Clinton and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna had set forth and ways to move these dialogues forward in tangible terms.

A preliminary walk-through of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington for his meeting with President Barack Obama on November 24 as well as the tentative program also figured in the discussions, the sources said.

The sources said Rao, who returned to New York by Acela Express after her meetings on Monday afternoon, besides being by Krishna's side when he meets with Clinton later in the week in New York, would also meet with Burns again as well as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke in New York.