India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Ashton B. Carter, has concluded his four-day official visit to India . During this visit, he discussed how the United States and India can work more closely together to ensure security and prosperity in the 21st century. According to a U.S. Embassy release, Deputy Secretary Carter’s meetings were a follow-up to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to India last month, when he made clear that the United States and India must work to deepen their security partnership "so that our relationship becomes more strategic, more practical, and more collaborative." According to the release, one of Secretary Panetta’s initiatives that Deputy Secretary Carter discussed in New Delhi was to make respective bureaucratic processes simpler, more responsive, and more effective to increase defense trade and cooperation. Carter also met with Indian defense industry executives in Hyderabad to discuss practical next steps for streamlining bureaucratic barriers in both the U.S. and India . He toured several promising Indo-U.S. facilities co-producing transport plane and helicopter components. As reaffirmed during the recent June 2012 U.S. -India Strategic Dialogue, the defense relationship between our two countries is an important dimension of our strategic partnership. The United States is committed to finding innovative ways to increase our defense cooperation with India and to identify opportunities to take an already strong defense relationship to the next level. Carter’s visit reinforced the message that our countries have crossed a threshold in our relations where our successes at home and abroad are strengthened by our defense cooperation, and that there is greater potential and areas of cooperation that can be tapped in the overall U.S.-India partnership.

US Deputy Defence Secretary concludes four-day India visit