US wants India to support Pak in tackling terrorism

In its first substantive remarks on India, the Obama administration wants New Delhi to support Pakistan in rooting out terrorism arguing that it has a "big stake" in the success of the democratic government in the Islamic nation.

The US also said it backed a global role for India and the central question is how the two countries can work together to address the regional, global challenges.

"I think it will be important for India to make clear that as Pakistan takes steps to deal with extremists on its own territory that India will be supportive of that," deputy secretary of state James Steinberg said on Monday.

The American assessment of what it expects from India while dealing with the volatile situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan was given by Steinberg in his address at the prestigious Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank in the first major foreign policy speech on India by a top Obama administration official.

Acknowledging India's efforts in the reconstruction of Afghanistan in the recent years, Steinberg said president Obama would set out the US strategy for the region in the coming weeks.

He said India should "look for ways to contribute to an overall environment which can then lead to further efforts to root out extremists...There is obviously a complex history between the two countries but we will encourage India to see that it has a big stake in the efforts that we will be advocating to work both with Afghanistan and Pakistan."

"As (the Pak) president (Asif Ali) Zardari and the Pakistani Government take courageous steps needed to confront and eliminate extremists, India and the US must work together with all our international partners to support them and facilitate democracy," Steinberg said.

He said India has a "big stake" in success of democratic government in Pakistan and is playing a very important role in South Asia. "We encourage India to continue that," he added.

Steiberg also said that the US and India have "moved beyond" bitter differences on nuclear weapons and that Washington sought a "third stage of rapprochement."

The two countries had uneasy relations during the Cold War and later came  to loggerheads over India's decision in 1998 to explode a nuclear bomb.

Steinberg said India and the US  should work together for a  "strengthened" NPT.

"The agreement not only provides a concrete platform for economic and  technological cooperation between our two countries but also offers a basis for  moving beyond one of our most serious barriers to political cooperation - the status of India's nuclear programem," Steinberg said.