New Delhi:
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said that his visit to India is likely the last trip overseas that he will lead as NSA and he cannot think of a better way to end his tenure in the White House.
Speaking at IIT Delhi during the session, ‘The United States and India: Building a shared future’, Sullivan said the United States is finalizing the necessary steps to remove long-standing regulations that have prevented civil nuclear cooperation between India’s leading nuclear entities and US Companies.
“Although former President Bush and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh laid out a vision of civil nuclear cooperation nearly 20 years ago, we have yet to fully realize it. But as we work to build clean energy technologies to enable growth in artificial intelligence, and to help US and Indian energy companies unlock their innovation potential, the Biden administration has determined that it is past time to take the next major step in cementing this partnership,” he said.
“So today I can announce that the United States is now finalizing the necessary steps to remove long-standing regulations that have prevented civil nuclear cooperation between India’s leading nuclear entities and US Companies. The formal paperwork will be done soon but this will be an opportunity to turn the page on some of the frictions of the past and create opportunities for entities that have been on restricted lists in the United States to come off those lists and enter into deep collaboration with the United States, with our private sector, scientists and technologists to move civil nuclear cooperation forward together,” he added.
He expressed optimism that the technological cooperation between the United States and India will get strengthened in the coming years.
“This is likely the last trip overseas that I will lead as NSA and I cannot think of a better way to end my tenure in the White House, visiting India on my final overseas trip to mark the advances that we have made together over the past four years. This is a shared and historic achievement…I have every reason to believe that within the next decade, we will see American and Indian firms working together to build the next generation of semiconductor technologies, American and Indian astronauts conducting cutting-edge research and space exploration together,” he said.
In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti said the ties between the United States and India have been strengthened not just due to the work of the two governments but people, institutions, thinkers and researchers.
He also paid tributes to US President Jimmy Carter who passed away last month.
“We will mark the life of a great statesman who died at the age of 100 years. A great American president, but also a great human being who came here at a low point in the United States and India relations and sought to lay down a foundation to reclaim the friendship,” he said.
He recalled that the US had pressed for India’s independence. “We advocated even against our close ally, Great Britain for the independence of the Indian people,” he said.
He also spoke of strong bilateral ties as the Biden administration completes its term.
“The completion of a chapter as a new one begins, the summary of the work that has happened not just between two governments, between two national security advisors, a President and a Prime Minister, but the peoples, the institutions, the thinkers, the researchers, the investors, the builders, the doers, those folks that come together to imagine a world that is not yet, but that when we close our eyes we hope maybe,” he said.
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