US may offer India advanced weapons

This was reinforced during talks visiting US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns had with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and senior officials here this week.

Bilateral security cooperation is expected to be one of the key areas for discussions Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee will have with his American counterpart Donald Rumsfeld during his ongoing visit to the US.

He is also meeting Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Before leaving for Washington, Mukherjee has made it clear that he was not carrying any shopping list of defence hardware and his visit, the first by an Indian Defence Minister to the US after a long gap, was exploratory in nature.

The US offer to supply to India F-16 warplanes is being debated in the Government here. The Defence Ministry is carrying out technical evaluation of the fighter aircraft but no decision has been taken so far to buy it.

While UN Security Council reforms is one of the important issues that will undoubtedly figure during the parleys Singh will have with President George W Bush, both American and Indian officials have contended that Indo-US relationship should not be viewed on the basis of any single issue.

Burns had struck positive chords saying India has the perfect right and met the criteria for permanent membership of the Security Council like being a large country with significant population, being democratic, giving substantial resources to the UN system, adhering to non-proliferation and counter-terrorism.