US has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the country was not about leveraging India to be a "counterweight" to China but to deepen ties.
Prime Minister Modi on Saturday left for Egypt after concluding his state visit during which he held wide-ranging talks with President Joe Biden and addressed the joint session of the US Congress.
He visited the US at the invitation of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
“This state visit wasn't about China. Look, India has challenges with China as well, right on their doorstep, but also more broadly in the region. And, clearly, the challenges presented by the People's Republic of China to both our nations were on the agenda yesterday, no question about that,” news agency PTI quoted John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House as having said.
“But this wasn't about leveraging India to be some sort of counterweight. India is a sovereign independent state. They have their own foreign policy that they have to manage. And they live in a tough neighbourhood,” he was quoted in the report as having said.
Kirby said India is becoming an increasing exporter of security, which the US welcomes, it mentioned.
"You can see a lot of that - our desire to improve the defence cooperation on hand yesterday in some of the deliverables, whether it's the co-production of jet engines, whether it's their purchase of MQ-9 drones. There is a lot we can do in the security front together, and that's really what we're focused on,” Kirby said as per the report.
He said Modi's visit was about sending a message to the American and Indian people about how important this bilateral relationship is to people around the world, it said.
“India has challenges with China on their own. And they address those challenges largely on their own,” he said.
“I will add that they are a member of the Indo-Pacific Quad and have been a terrific contributor through that multilateral forum. It's not a formal alliance. It's not a military organisation. They have legitimate concerns in the Indo-Pacific that they're addressing through their own vehicles as appropriate,” Kirby said, as per the report.
In his address to the joint meeting of the US Congress for a second time on Thursday, Modi said the "dark clouds of coercion and confrontation" are casting their shadow on the Indo-Pacific, in a veiled attack on China amid its aggressive military manoeuvring in the strategically vital region, it mentioned.
