Purpose of Indo-US Strategic Dialogue is to think big: Blake

Lalit K Jha
Washington, May 29 (PTI) The main purpose of the next
week Indo-US Strategic Dialogue here is to think big and think
strategically and not to focus much on deliverables, a top US
official has said.
"There will be deliverables; I don't want to talk
about the deliverables now. But we are really not focused that
much on deliverables.
The purpose of this dialogue is really to think
strategically and, again, to get the key people who work on
these issues together to think ahead to the (US) President's
visit and to think strategically about what we can do,"
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert
Blake said on Friday.
"It's not so much to have a review of all the things
that we have done. We know what we have done. It's really to
think ahead.
And when we have all of these senior-level officials
together in one place, we have to take maximum advantage of
their time and, again, use it productively," Blake said.
"So that's the real purpose of the strategic
dialogue. It is not to supplant the 18 different dialogues
that we have, headed by all these different cabinet ministers
on both sides.
Those will be really the areas during those
dialogues where they will announce deliverables of one sort or
another," Blake argued, thus trying to tone down the
expectations from the meeting.
The Indian delegation comprising of several
ministers and top officials would be led by External Affairs
Minister S M Krishna, while the US side would be led by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Indian delegation is scheduled to arrive on June
one. On June 2, Blake said the two delegations will have both
private sector and government activities.
The US-India Business Council will be hosting its
35th annual meeting, which will be addressed by Obama's top
economic advisor Larry Summers and the Education Secretary.
And then on the government-to-government level,
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns,
and his Indian counterpart Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao,
will oversee a very wide-ranging foreign policy dialogue that
will cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, probably
China, and many other topics.
However, the main dialogue would be on June 3 at the
Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, which will
be chaired by Clinton and Krishna. MORE PTI