(Bloomberg) -- India’s relationship with the US is one of its most important despite occasional frustrations and differences, according to the country’s Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
“The US relationship, both for strategic purposes and for economic purposes, is in many ways an invaluable relationship,” Jaishankar said Friday, at a New Delhi-based think tank.
The foreign minister’s remarks come as the South Asian nation tries to strike a delicate balance between increasingly close ties with the US and its allies while managing its relationship with Russia from whom it buys a large quantity of discounted crude oil and weapons.
The US expressed frustration over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s July visit to Moscow where he met Russian president Vladimir Putin. Modi tried to balance that with a visit to Ukraine earlier this month, his first since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
India is hoping deeper ties with the US lead to advanced technology transfers and investment to boost the country’s fast growing economy, while Washington looks at New Delhi as a bulwark against an increasingly assertive China.
US-India relations are not about “congruence” or an “alliance” but “about overlapping interests and it is about the ability to work together on issues, areas and theaters which suit us,” Jaishankar said.
“There are regions and issues over which we profoundly agree within us and there are clearly some issues on which we do not agree and its on full public display,” the minister said.
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