East Asia, yes. Iran, err.

US State Department’s view on India’s regional role

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of an online Q&A with Robert Blake, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia.

Nitin Pai: You have been one of the few U.S. officials to state that India is part of East Asia. How do you see the partnership between India and the United States shaping up in terms of the balance of power in East Asia? Specifically the South China Sea.

Robert Blake: Thank you for that question. As I said earlier, I expect that how we can expand cooperation and information sharing on activities in Asia will be a real focus of the Strategic Dialogue between the Secretary and External Affairs Minister Krishna. Already we’ve announced that we’re going to have a trilateral dialogue between the United States and India and Japan. And that we look very much forward to India’s increased participation in East Asian institutions such as the East Asia Summit. So I think there’s a tremendous scope for greater collaboration in this area. And again, this will be very much an important focus of the dialogue next week and the week after.

NP: Do you see the India-U.S. strategic relationship as providing a basis for India to attempt reapproachment between U.S. and Iran? After all, if the U.S. and Iran get over their vexed relationship the entire geo-politics of the region would be transformed.

RB: I think the U.S.-Iran relationship is going to be decided on the basis of some of the important efforts that are already underway on the Iranian nuclear program. I don’t expect that India will have a huge role to play in that, although we do value our dialogue with India on Iran. Let me just leave it at that. [State Department]

The entire transcript is here. See reports by Indrani Bagchi, Narayan Lakshman, Indira Kannan, S Rajagopalan and ANI.

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