WASHINGTON: Denying suggestions that the U.S.-India partnership was intended as a counterweight to China, a senior U.S. official said its sole intent was "to build India up" working on common core values.
"I would fundamentally point to the fact that this is a US-India effort and it's not necessarily to counterweight anyone," Phil Reiner, White House's senior director for South Asian Affairs, told foreign media at a round table Tuesday on Obama's India trip.
"I don't think either the U.S. or India has an interest in any kind of confrontation or much less any sort of intent to contain China" he said. "That's not the intent," Reiner said. "The intent here is to work together... to work off of the core values that we have to build India up."
"And this is something that we're very much interested in doing, and it's in both of our interests to do so," he said. "I would not necessarily put that forward, though, as a counterweight to China per se."
Both U.S. and India, Reiner said, were "very much interested in working off of those fundamental values and establishing systems that basically work off of established rules and norms in the international sphere to avoid conflict, to avoid any situation where there may be perceived bullying."
Discounting a New York Times report that the first issue that Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed as soon as they met was China, he said "there was many things that we spoke about."
"This is simply the policy breakthrough that was necessary in order to actually implement what was already an existing agreement," he said.
"So in terms of strategic stability, it's really a continuation of something that already existed and has not had a negative impact."
Reiner said over the course of the years, the U.S. had "made it very clear that we can maintain robust relationships with both countries and that it's not zero-sum."
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