WASHINGTON, April 29: A top State Department official called on Sunday for more military and foreign policy cooperation with India, predicting New Delhi will become a main US strategic partner in the coming generation.

Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, hailed current US ties with India as “the strongest relationship the two countries have enjoyed since India’s independence in 1947.”

The push for stronger ties comes as the United States tries to forge strategic alliances to counter China’s perceived military and economic ascendancy in Asia. In his remarks, which appeared in an article in Sunday’s Washington Post newspaper, Burns credited the warm relations to the work of the two most recent US presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

He praised Bush's “ambitious” efforts in particular that, he said, have yielded “impressive agreements regarding civilian nuclear power, trade, science and agriculture with India’s reformist prime minister, Manmohan Singh.”

“The pace of progress between Washington and Delhi has been so rapid, and the potential benefits to American interests so substantial, that I believe within a generation Americans may view India as one of our two or three most important strategic partners,” Burns wrote.—AFP