Obama to build ties with India, Indonesia in East Asia Summit-15 Sep, 2011

15 Sep, 2011, 09.20AM IST, PTI

Obama to build ties with India, Indonesia in East Asia Summit


WASHINGTON: Aiming to build ties with emerging countries like India and Indonesia, President Barack Obama will attend the East Asia Summit in November, an Obama administration official said.

"There are many aspects of our strategy of greater commitment to institutions like the East Asia Summit, President Obama will make his first appearance as US President in November, building ties with emerging states like India and Indonesia, obviously dealing with the extraordinarily complex set of relationships with a country like China," a senior State Department official said.

"But at the top of the list is our relationship with our partners and our allies. We have five treaty allies in Asia - Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand," the official told reporters travelling with the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enroute to San Francisco to attend the US-Australian Ministerial, better known as the AUSMIN followed by the APEC Women And The Economy summit.

He said, over the last seven years, there was already a very strong relationship between Australia and the US, it has become even stronger.

"We are working on a variety of things that we'll be discussing over the next couple of days. We are going to talk directly about how US and Australian forces can operate closely together, can work together in a variety of ways, and to see how Australia can play a role in what is termed the Global Posture Review," the official said.

Referring to the relationship between the US and Australia, the official said more recently, their discussions and focus of cooperation has got much further afield.

"We worked very closely on China with Prime Minister Rudd and, who now is Foreign Minister, is probably more than any other leader has just a remarkable command of China, has lectured in Chinese universities in Chinese, and has provided us his expert advice and commentary about how to proceed," he said.

"We have worked with Australia on architecture and on trade. Architects in Australia have given us enormously good advice about how to position ourselves in this critical period on Asia. And as importantly, we have worked in what we might call out-of-area pursuits," he said.

"Australia's been enormously helpful in Afghanistan and in efforts on Pakistan. And more recently, Foreign Minister Rudd has been deeply engaged in a variety of efforts associated with supporting the Arab Spring both through bringing together other likeminded nations and also coordinating closely with the US," the official said.