SECRETARY KERRY: Good afternoon, everybody, or good evening, almost. Happy to welcome the National Security Advisor of India Ajit Doval, and have a chance to be able to work with him on a number of key issues for us.
Obviously, President Obama is delighted that Prime Minister Modi is able to be in Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit. And India has a very important role to play with respect to responsible stewardship of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials. India has a long record of being a leader, of being responsible, and it is particularly important right now at a time when we see in the region some choices being made that may accelerate possible arms construction, which we have serious questions about. We’ve raised them with various partners in the region. So our hope is that this Nuclear Security Summit will contribute to everybody’s understanding about our global responsibilities and choices.
President Obama has called the relationship with India a defining relationship of this century, and there are many reasons for that. India – a powerful, big, the largest democracy in the world, and a real partner with the United States on a lot of technology, energy issues. We’re particularly grateful to India for the leadership it offered in Paris helping us to reach a climate agreement. And now, there is more that we can do with respect to the next steps in that agreement.
So I’m delighted to have Ajit here. There are other security issues we need to talk about, but it’s important to have this conversation, and I’m grateful for you taking the time to be here.
MR DOVAL: Thank you very much, (inaudible).
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you (inaudible). Thank you.
MR DOVAL: Thank you very much, Secretary Kerry. It’s a great delight to be here. I’m most grateful to you for sparing your time for this meeting. It’s a very, very important summit. We attach considerable value to it, and Prime Minister Modi, who will be here, is deeply interested in seeing and ensuring that the safety and security of the radioactive material must be ensured.
We have made many strides after the new government of Prime Minister Modi has come and we have taken our relationship to new heights. We have got many areas in which we have done – we have been able to improve and achieve substantial results. We do hope that this cooperation will find a new strength and new height, will get further strengthened and deepened. And we share many concerns, particularly with concerns about terrorism, about concerns about the cyber space (inaudible) and we’ll be working together on that. And we do hope that together, we should be able to make this place a better place to live and meet with these challenges together, and in cooperation with all other likeminded countries. And thank you very much for receiving me here, and I’m most – we are all very proud and very happy about our good relationship and excellently growing relationship with United States.
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you, sir.
