Bobby Jindal: Obama's India visit a positive sign

Louisiana's Indian-American Republican Governor Bobby Jindal says one of the things that he likes about Democrat President Barack Obama is his building an economic relationship with India.

"I think that when he went to India and made a strong relationship with the world's largest democracy, a free market economy. That was a positive sign," he told CNN Tuesday when asked to name one thing on which he agrees with Obama.

Jindal, who is generally highly critical of Obama, also said: "I agree with his refusing to bend down to the liberals that asked him to put an artificial ... to withdraw artificially before we're done in Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, in an interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Jindal repeated his charge that at a meeting with the president during the gulf oil spill he and a parish official were told specifically by Obama not to go on TV and criticise him.

It was clear Obama was frustrated with the level of criticism he was getting, he said and went on to accuse Obama of caring more about perception and politics than actually cutting through the red tape and getting things done.

Stronger Indo-US ties not to counterbalance China: US

President Barack Obama's enthusiasm for a stronger Indo-US relationship is not to "counterbalance" China's growing influence over Asia, a top American official has said.



"I don't think you heard anybody say that in the course of the President's three-day visit (to India), we're looking to counterbalance China in any way," Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, told journalists in New York and Washington during a digital video press conference.

"The President repeatedly made clear that we want a positive, cooperative and constructive relations with China in the same way that India does," he said.

Blake asserted that Obama's trip was to support India's expanding role in global institutions and Asian institutions, but the backing is not at China's cost.

"I think this is much more about how to expand India's role in some of these global institutions and in some of the Asian institutions, and we expressed clearly our support for that. But we do not see that growing role as coming at the expense of China," he said, pointing that secretary of state Hillary Clinton had recently said that "we do not seek to contain China."

After Obama endorsed India's bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council, US media pointed out that this was to counterbalance China.