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Obama accepts Manmohan’s invitation to visit India

L’Aquila, Italy: United States President Barack Obama has accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to visit India, dates for which will be finalised through diplomatic channels.

The invitation was renewed by Dr. Singh when he and Mr. Obama met during a brief ‘pull-aside’ at the G-8+G-5 Summit here on Thursday.

Mr. Obama, on his part, invited Dr. Singh for a bilateral visit to the U.S. which was accepted by the Indian leader.

“There is an invitation for him [Dr. Singh] to go. There is also an invitation to President Obama to come to India. Both have been accepted,” Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters.

Addressing a news conference at the end of the summit, Mr. Obama said it would be “wrongheaded” to think that global challenges could be met in the absence of “major powers” like India.

“One thing I think is absolutely true is, is that for us to think we can somehow deal with some of the global challenges in the absence of major powers — like China, India, and Brazil — seems to me wrongheaded,” Mr. Obama said in comments that will please India ahead of the planned visit of his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to New Delhi later this month.

Mr. Obama also endorsed Dr. Singh’s fresh calls for urgent U.N. reforms saying the global community would have to “update and refresh and renew” international institutions like the world body that were set up in a different time and place.

Ahead of the summit, Dr. Singh made a strong pitch for U.N. Security Council reforms saying its present structure posed “serious problems of legitimacy.”

“The Security Council has not changed at all and its two-tiered membership where five permanent members have veto power was clearly anachronistic,” Dr. Singh said.

Amidst a growing perception that the importance of the G-8 is diminishing, Mr. Obama said, “We have to update and refresh and renew the international institutions that were set up in a different time and place. Some — the United Nations — date back to post-World War II. Others, like the G8, are 30 years old.” — PTI