NEW DELHI: With Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee leaving for New York to attend the General Assembly session of the United Nations, where a 45-minute meeting on the sidelines with President George Bush has been scheduled, the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage provided a synopsis of the talks which the two leaders will be having.

In an interview to the daily Hindu’s Washington-based correspondent, Armitage answered a whole gamut of questions which are likely to figure in Bush’s talks with both Vajpayee and President Musharraf. The questions ranged from the significance of the events of September 11 to the proposals of the US administration in respect of Iraq.

In answer to the criticism of India that the US administration was not being even-handed, Armitage was sharp in his response and termed it as “absurd.”

Commenting on the forthcoming elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Armitage said, “it was the Indian government that announced that they were going to have elections. We supported that idea and merely voiced the fact that we expect it to be free, fair and open. For a democratic society, it seems to me this is the least one democratic society can expect from another.”

On terrorism, Armitage said: “I think our Indian friends are sensitive and sensible enough to know that we have got to fight these issues one at a time. And your terrorism, particularly coming from Kashmir, is horrible. We condemn it. We have to make sure that how we approached the solution to the problem is not something which ultimately may lead to a failed state next door.”

Asked about the priorities that President Bush had in mind, Armitage observed, “President Bush is quite proud that in his campaign he made it a hallmark that one of the things he was going to do was to reconstitute, re-invigorate, in effect re-develop, a very robust relationship with India. From his point of view he is well on his way to doing that. We are pretty proud of it. The activities in summer, in June, threw a temporary roadblock into that. But I think that we are past that now and moving forward again. And I think that President Bush would want to talk to Prime Minister Vajpayee about that.”