11 July 2004	Sunday	22 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

WASHINGTON, July 10: India's new government appears as committed to intensifying cooperation with the United States as the recently ousted leadership, Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith said.

He said in an interview that the administration had urged India to join the Group of Eight industrial states' initiative to expand the global peacekeeping capability.

Officials of India's new Congress Party-led government were briefed on the initiative when Mr Feith visited New Delhi last month, but has not made a decision on participating, he said in the interview on Friday at the Pentagon.

Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No 3 official, co-chairs a US-India defence policy group and met leaders of the new Indian government soon after the Congress Party was the surprise victor in parliamentary elections held in May.

Starting with the Clinton administration in 1999 and accelerating under President George Bush, Washington has moved closer to New Delhi, propelled by shared democratic values, a need for expanded trade and a counterweight to China.

US-India ties improved under the now out-of-power Bharatiya Janata Party.

US experts have predicted Congress would be more difficult for Washington to deal with than the BJP. But Mr Feith gave no indication of that.

"What most impressed us when we had the meetings with the new leadership was that they expressed their interest in continuing the work that we had been doing in recent years with the Indian government," he said.

"There was an appreciation of what we had built up in the US-Indian relationship in general, and the defence relationship in particular. The new Indian leadership wants to preserve it and build on it further," he added.

India previously rejected a US request to provide peacekeeping troops to Iraq and Mr Feith said while he discussed Iraq in New Delhi, he did not press the new government on the troop contribution issue.

With the recent transfer of power from US occupation authorities to Iraqis, the issue of more foreign troops to help with stability is "largely a matter for the new Iraqi government" to deal with, he said.-Reuters