U.S. expects news of major India deals

Nov 06, 2010 |

Reuters

Tags:

Obama visit

U.S. officials said on Friday they expect major contracts involving U.S. companies and India to be announced during President Barack Obama's visit to India on Saturday.

"We expect several deals to be announced around the president's visit tomorrow," Mike Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, told reporters traveling to India with Obama.

Administration officials declined to provide further information on the agreements.

Obama left on Friday for a 3-1/2 day visit to India, his first stop on a 10-day tour of four Asian countries. Obama has said he wants the trip to lead to more U.S. exports and jobs.

Lobbying for billions of dollars in contracts to overhaul India's mostly Russian-supplied military, a relic of their Cold War-era partnership, has underlied preparation for the trip.

Those orders include a $11 billion deal for 126 fighter jets that could benefit Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. France's Dassault, Russia's MiG-35, Sweden's Saab and the Eurofighter Typhoon as also competing.

Obama's trip started just three days after his Democratic party sustained big election losses tied to the weak economy.

Administration officials also said that intense negotiations were continuing on a free trade agreement with Korea, but said they had no updates on the status of efforts to remove obstacles to a long-stalled U.S.-South Korean free trade agreement in time for Obama's meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul.

"Our teams are engaged with each other in an ongoing way," Froman said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/40683" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-7a2dac01aea15d5bf811015002f3dad1" value="form-7a2dac01aea15d5bf811015002f3dad1" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85508243" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>