'US has excellent military ties with India'

The United States has an excellent military to military relationship with India, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

"We have very strong military-to-military relations with the Indian government, with the Indian military; have had them for some time," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said at a news briefing.

Morrell said Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently visited India when he reaffirmed the Obama administration's commitment to have strong working relationship with the Indian military.

"The secretary just visited India recently and reaffirmed our strong working relationship with Indian military, exploring new ways in which we can partner and exercise and do disaster-relief work, and sell weapons and other military hardware to the Indians," Morrell said.

At a Congressional hearing recently, Admiral Robert F Willard, Commander US Pacific Command had argued that the US must continue to strengthen its relationship with India.

"We must ensure the US-India relationship remains rooted in our extensive common interests of which the Afghanistan-Pakistan issue is only one," he said.

"I think that the India-US relationship right now is stronger than I've ever enjoyed. As you know, because of our history, we've only been truly engaging with India mil-to-mil for about the last half a dozen years; and yet it's been pretty profound how far that's come," Willard said in response to a question at the Congressional hearing.

He said America's relationship with India has grown significantly over the past five years as both countries work to overcome apprehensions formed during Cold War era, particularly with respect to defence cooperation.

Noting that resolution of the long-standing End User Monitoring issue removed a major obstacle to a more robust and sophisticated defense sales programme, Willard said that to date India has purchased Lockheed Martin C-130Js and Boeing P-8I aircraft; expressed their interest to acquire C-17s; and conducted flight tests of F-16s and F/A-18s (under consideration in the medium multi-mission role combat aircraft competition).

The recent increase in defense sales, which exceeded $ 2 billion in 2009, not only enhances US access to one of the largest defense markets in the world, but more importantly enables greater cooperation between our armed forces, he said.

"As our relationship develops, US Pacific Command remains mindful of the significance of India-Pakistan tensions, particularly as they relate to the broader security discussion and the management of geo-political challenges that span Combatant Commands (Pakistan resides within Central Commands AOR and India resides in the Pacific AOR)."

"We are keenly aware of the importance of a peaceful co-existence between these two nuclear-armed nations and stand ready to assist with this goal in conjunction with interagency partners," he said.