Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama shake hands after a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday in Washington, DC.
AFP/IANS/Washington
Prime Minister Narendra Modi told US President Barack Obama on Tuesday he hoped for a deal "soon" to allow a WTO trade facilitation deal blocked by India to go forward.
India has refused to endorse the landmark deal to reduce trade barriers, until it gets exemptions for its food stockpiles from possible punitive measures.
Modi said after his Oval Office talks with Obama that the pair had had a "candid" discussion on the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).
"India supports trade facilitation. However, I also expect that we are able to find a solution that takes care of our concern on food security.
"I believe that it should be possible to do that soon," Modi said.
Stockpiling and subsidies for the poor are considered trade-distorting under existing WTO rules.
All 160 WTO members including India agreed to implement the TFA -- which would mark the first big global trade liberalization deal in two decades -- at a 2013 meeting in Bali. India's move to hold up the deal in July surprised fellow WTO members.
The agreement was due to take effect in mid-2015.
Modi and Obama on Tuesday vowed to go forward with a new agenda to realise the full potential of a renewed US-India partnership for the 21st century.
"As nations, we've partnered over the decades to deliver progress to our people... Still, the true potential of our relationship has yet to be fully realised," they said in a joint op-ed piece published on the Washington Post website.
"The advent of a new government in India is a natural opportunity to broaden and deepen our relationship," the two leaders wrote ahead of their bilateral summit to reboot a stalled relationship.
The op-ed noted that their "partnership is robust, reliable and enduring, and it is expanding" involving more bilateral collaboration than ever, including between the two militaries, private sectors and civil society.
"Indeed, so much has happened that, in 2000, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could declare that we are natural allies."
But, "It is time to set a new agenda, one that realises concrete benefits for our citizens," Obama and Modi wrote noting, "With a reinvigorated level of ambition and greater confidence, we can go beyond modest and conventional goals."
"This will be an agenda that enables us to find mutually rewarding ways to expand our collaboration in trade, investment and technology that harmonise with India's ambitious development agenda, while sustaining the United States as the global engine of growth," they said.
