PM-Obama meet likely in Cambodia Nov 19-20

Obama’s determination to lean across the political aisle in Washington will reflect in his foreign policy in his second term, and making up with Myanmar is perfectly in sync with that belief. Obama has already met Myanmarese President Thein Sein at the ASEAN summit in Indonesia last year and outgoing US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited Yangon and Naypyidaw last year.

The Obama-Singh meeting will reconfirm all the public platitudes —strategic partnership, et al — that have recently served to define India’s most important relationship, and underscore the vast panoply of mutual interest, from China to Central Asia, Afghanistan-Pakistan and the Middle East. The challenge to both India and the US, in the next four years of Obama’s administration and the remaining 18 months of Singh’s, is to put into place a big idea so that the rest of the relationship can gravitate around it.

Official sources in Washington and Delhi say there is revived interest in a free-trade treaty even though large parts of the economic relationship is driven by the private sector, which includes tensions over US visa policies for IT workers and US disinterest in pushing for totalisation of tax reimbursements to Indian workers in the

... contd.