WASHINGTON, Nov 7: President George Bush, wrestling with the myriad complexities of dealing with a number of foreign politicians who have been trekking to the White House since the September 11 events, is now getting ready for his first face-to-face encounters with the leaders of Pakistan and India.

Indian Prime Atal Behari Vajpayee was due to land in Washington on Wednesday afternoon for a meeting with the US president on Friday. General Pervez Musharraf reaches New York on Friday and will meet Mr Bush on Saturday in New York.

The two visits, seen as crucial in the backdrop of the military campaign in Afghanistan and the broader movement against terrorism, confront US policy-makers with the task of having to more fully explain how precisely they see relations developing in the future with Pakistan and India. They will need all their ingenuity to satisfy Gen Musharraf and Mr Vajpayee that they value Pakistan and India each in its own right, without tilting to either side.

The feeling in Indian circles here is that while their prime minister’s visit will inevitably be dominated by the Afghan crisis, Mr Vajpayee is more likely to be interested in exploring in how far the US is willing to go in implementing the many proposals for bilateral cooperation that have been discussed since the warming up of Indo-US relations during the last few months of the Clinton administration.

The Indians complain that no progress has been made on several gut issues, such as proposals relating to technology transfer, and Americans seem more interested now in military-to-military cooperation and security cooperation, a terminology heard only recently in the context of the US-India format. There is political resistance within India to the idea of any deep military ties with the US. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca sought to reassure Indian journalists at a briefing on Tuesday that while Afghanistan and terrorism comprised an immediate imperative, other things were moving forward with India.

India may want to learn what President Bush meant when he said the other day that the US expects states backing the US-led anti-coalition against terrorism to do more than pay lip-service to the campaign’s objectives. New Delhi also wishes the US to clarify the sudden fluorescence in Washington’s ties with Islamabad — a development that it has watched warily — and its implications for the US-India-Pakistan triangular relationship, particularly with reference to Kashmir.

India already has a considerable lobby within Congress, and Mr Vajpayee will spend most of the day on Thursday in talking to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.