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White House officials say President Barack Obama will visit North Carolina on Monday to talk about the economy.

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New Delhi, India (AHN) – India and Russia, who have been friends since the days of India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, are now ready to go beyond the traditional bilateral issues of military, space and strategy. This was the unanimous feeling emerging out of a recent meeting between India’s External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Both the ministers met on Thursday to prepare grounds for the scheduled meeting between Manmohan Singh and Dmitry Medvedev, prime ministers of India and Russia, respectively, to be held in December this year.

The new areas for cooperation, as zeroed in during the Krishna-Ivanov meeting, are civilian aircraft project, pharmaceutical, diamonds, IT and petroleum.

The Thursday meeting was between representatives of India and Russia to a joint body, called the Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical, Economic and Cultural Cooperation. Both the sides also signed a protocol on the occasion with an idea to reach the target of USD 20 billion in terms of bilateral trade by the year 2015. The current year’s figure in this regard stands at USD 10 billion.

In addition to this, the two countries also talked about atomic energy and space sectors and tied the loose ends in this regard as well as discussing the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft project between Russian and Indian armies. The Union Cabinet of India is currently considering the proposal.

India also finds pharmaceuticals to be a “promising area” where it could look for increasing exports and address the trade balance in wake of increased Russian oil imports. In this regard, India has expressed complete agreement with the Russian vision document for the year 2020, under which it plans to decrease its dependence on imports by concentrating on joint ventures in key areas.

According to the sources, both India and Russia are keen to encourage pharmaceutical trade because of their high value-low volume currently and also due to the fact that Russia has to airlift most of the pharmaceutical consignments to fulfill its needs within Russia and Kazakhstan.

Therefore, the countries are seeking joint ventures in pharmaceuticals as well as in gas exploration.

Meanwhile, sources claim that both the countries are likely to sign on the dotted line for a fifth-generation fighter design contract during Medvedev’s visit to India in December. Russian company Sukhoi and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have already agreed this year to work jointly to develop the fifth-generation fighter jet, which will be based on Russia’s T-50 prototype fifth-generation fighter.

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New Delhi – President Barack Obama ended his three-day trip to India Monday with a call for raising the world’s biggest democracy to global power status by granting it a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

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President Obama starts his three-day visit to India hoping to strengthen America’s political ties and expand American trade relations with the world’s largest democracy. Indians, in turn, expect that America will open its doors to even more imports from the world’s second fastest growing economy – after China – and will further ease the path for India, also a nuclear power like China, to acquire nuclear technology for civilian uses. Both parties would be wise to prepare to be disappointed when…

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Three days ahead of his visit to India, President Barack Obama on Wednesday described India as a “cornerstone” of US engagement in Asia, but held out no assurances on prickly issues – support for permanent membership to the UN Security Council for India or ending curbs on export of dual use technology.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama on Nov. 9 will travel to three other democracies Indonesia, Korea and Japan after finishing his trip to India and with his return trip to Washington scheduled for Nov. 14.

After attending a bilateral meeting with President Yudhoyono in Jakarta and an official dinner on the first day Nov. 9 in Indonesia, President Obama will begin his next day “by laying a wreath at the Heroes Cemetery in Jakarta,” Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told journalists on Thursday.

“From there he (President Obama) will go on and pay a visit to the Istiqlal Mosque, which is the largest mosque in Indonesia — again, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country,” added Rhodes.

Later the president is scheduled to speak at a yet undecided location “about some of the themes of democracy and development and our outreach to Muslim communities around the world, while also speaking of Indonesia’s pluralism and tolerance as well,” Rhodes said.

President Obama will not only speak about Indonesia’s broad religious diversity, but also address issues of “importance of Indonesia to him, personally, having lived there for several years in Jakarta as a boy,” said the official.

The night of Nov.10 will be spent in Seoul, South Korea as the entourage flies in there with the 11th, Veterans Day, kicking off with the president “speaking to U.S. troops at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul,” said Rhodes.

President Obama is expected to have his “seventh” bilateral meeting with “President Hu Jintao of China,” Rhodes noted, saying that the G20 agenda takes over from there.

There are total four press conferences President Obama is going to hold on this trip, starting “one with Prime Minister Singh, one with President Yudhoyono, one with President Lee, and then the concluding G20 conference,” Rhodes announced.

With that concluding press conference, the president will travel to Yokohama, Japan. “On Nov. 13, the President will begin the day by giving remarks to the CEO business summit that is attached to the APEC meetings,” noted Rhodes.

In addition to bilateral with Japanese leaders, President Obama will have “a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Gillard of Australia,” the official said, adding that the following day there might be “a bilateral meeting with President Medvedev of Russia.

Finding time from the tight APEC schedule during those days, President Obama will pay a visit to the great Buddha statue that is nearby in Yokohama,” the official said, adding, “This is one of the marvels of Japanese culture, and the President had visited this particular Buddha statue as a child actually when he visited Japan, so he is very much looking forward to this opportunity to pay a return visit.”

Outlining the objectives for the Asian trip, Rhodes told journalists, “We see this very much in the context of the focus we put on Asia as a region of the world with the most dynamic and growing markets that are going to be fundamental to our export initiative of doubling exports in the world, but also fundamental to a number of political and security concerns that will a subject of the President’s travel.”

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US President Barack Obama’s visit to India puts the spotlight on its $60-billion IT sector, which argues it is a creator of…

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Ahead of US President Barack Obama’s arrival in Mumbai next week, officials of the Maharashtra home department and city police held another closed-door meeting on Tuesday with American officials over the security arrangements for the high-profile visit.

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Upset over reports that US President Barack Obama may skip the Golden Temple during his India visit, a Sikh group ion Washington on Thursday asked community members to campaign through Twitter and Facebook accounts of the White House for his visit to Sikhism’s holiest.

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During his November visit to India, Barack Obama will be paying a visit to Amritsar’s Golden Temple, a first for a United States president. This stopover may be unusual for a head of the state and has many thinking. Is this visit being made especially for First Lady Michelle Obama, who will be accompanying her husband to India? May be, for not many know of the Obamas Punjab connection.

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