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MODERATOR: Good afternoon, friends. I welcome you to this media interaction. As is usual,
we will first have opening remarks followed by a few questions that the two leaders have
agreed to respond to. May I now request the External Affairs Minister of India, Mr. Salman
Khurshid, to make his opening remarks.
EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER KHURSHID: Mr. John Kerry, Secretary of State, Secretary Moniz,
who has gone on, and distinguished delegates from the U.S., colleagues, friends from the
media, I am indeed delighted to host Secretary Kerry and Secretary Moniz and a very distinguished
American delegation that is here. It is a pleasure to welcome the two secretaries on
their first visit to India after taking over their current responsibilities. We have just
completed detailed discussions covering key strategic pillars of our relationship: security,
economics and technology, regional strategic and political issues, and global issues.
Our discussions were truly characterized by the convergence and the candor. Secretary
Kerry was positive in an assessment of our strategic partnership and generous in his
appraisal of the potential for the future of our relationship. It is a perspective my
colleagues and I fully share. This shared perspective is also reflected in our joint
statement and in the fact sheets drafted by officials on both sides, which will be made
available to you very shortly.
Today, we are expanding our bilateral cooperation to new horizons such as energy while intensifying
existing avenues of cooperation and health, science and technology, education, space,
defense, and peaceful nuclear energy. At the same time, we are very satisfied with the
ongoing pace of our political dialogues, which have been (inaudible) intensified bilateral
consultations on key issues in our region and beyond, including in the larger Asian
context. We are delighted to be developing an increasingly global dimension to the India-U.S.
strategic partnership.
Today at the conclusion of this fourth round of our Strategic Dialogue, we can take satisfaction
in the fact that within the few years since we raised our relationship to the strategic
footing, our bilateral dialogue is wide-ranging to the extent of taking an all-of-government
character. To put that in perspective, we have exchanged as many as 112 senior official
high-level visits in the year 2012. Exchanges in the current year continue to be equally
intense and wide-ranging, with all 47 official visits already exchanged covering conversations
ranging from homeland security to education, from space to energy, and from our bilateral
dialogue with Japan to a trilateral conversation with Afghanistan.
A number of important visits and dialogue processes are scheduled over the next several
months, including the ministerial energy dialogue and the CEOs forum, both of which are coordinated
on our side by the Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission. In participating in special
events, celebrating our partnership in the green and affordable innovation and in co-chairing
the high education dialogue with our Human Resource Development Minister, the Secretary
has highlighted the significance of innovation and education as pillars of this strategic
partnership.
I want to particularly thank him for this, and there has otherwise been too little said
about these very vital aspects of our partnership which exercise an important aspect - an impact
on the lives of our people. I want to thank our distinguished visitors for their presence
here in India. We deeply appreciate their commitment in this partnership and their substantive
contribution during our dialogue. We hope to continue to build on the good work done
so far in expanding the horizons of the India-U.S. relationship.
And may I say on a personal note that Secretary Kerry and I seem to have struck the right
chemistry (inaudible). (Laughter.) It's now my pleasure to request Secretary Kerry to
address you, after which we will take a few questions.
SECRETARY KERRY: Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Khurshid. I don't think
we seem to have; I think we definitely did. (Laughter.) So I'm happy to be here with you.
I'm really delighted to be here at the fourth U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue, my first as
Secretary of State, my first visit to Delhi as Secretary of State. But I've had the privilege
of coming here to India many times as a United States Senator, and I'm always grateful for
the wonderful reception, the warmth of the reception, the good friendships that I have
here, and as the Minister said this morning to me, he said, "Welcome home." So in a sense,
it is a second home and I appreciate the chance to be here.
I want to thank the External Affairs Minister and the Government of India for a wonderful
welcome to our entire delegation. And I commented this morning that there were more people from
more agencies at a higher level than I get to see on any given day in Washington. It's
a significant representation, and there's a reason for that significant representation.
It's because this is a very important relationship, it's a very important dialogue, and today,
I think the breadth of the issues that we discussed really underscores that reality.
I'm very pleased to announce that in furtherance of this dialogue, in an effort to keep the
high level that we think this relationship deserves, that Vice President Biden will be
visiting India in late July in order to continue this dialogue, and I look forward to welcoming
the External Affairs Minister to Washington as soon as we work out a date.
This is the first time that Minister Khurshid and I have together led this dialogue, and
both of us are particularly eager and committed to taking this relationship to new heights.
India and the United States, two of the most powerful economies in the world, two democracies,
two countries that share so much in terms of our values and our aspirations, we believe
have an opportunity to be able to set a new standard for cooperation on a number of challenges
that we all face.
Twenty years ago as a United States Senator, I led one of the first, if not the first,
U.S. Senate trade delegation visits to India. It was at a time when there was a fellow by
- it was the Finance Minister by the name of Singh, the current Prime Minister. And
he had just embarked on a series of major economic reforms. And nobody quite knew where
those were going to go, where they would take either India or the rest of the world. Now
that's a matter of history. It has taken India to new economic heights and potential.
But relationships don't transform by chance. They transform through a lot of hard work
and through a shared vision, and that's exactly what the strategic dialogue that we engaged
in today is all about. It's an effort to galvanize both sides to think ambitiously and creatively
about the next steps in the partnership, so that 20 years from now our successors will
stand here before you and they will be able to look and say how far the relationship has
come.
In witness of that today we talked about space cooperation, about technology possibilities
of joint venture. We talked about procurement issues between our countries. We talked about
defense, co-development, co-manufacture, co-purchase. We talked about education, about agriculture,
about health, and ways in which we cooperate in terms of health capacity-building. We talked
about commercial enterprises and we talked about some of the impediments to joint investment
and to foreign investment. And we were reassured, certainly from our part, that India is taking
important steps to try to address each of those concerns, and that we are committed
to taking steps to address the concerns of our friends in India. And there always mutual
concerns.
Yesterday at the Habitat Center, I had the privilege of speaking and I talked about how
India and the United States are really uniquely positioned and equipped to take on some of
the toughest challenges of our time, particularly security challenges, the challenge of global
climate change, and the challenge of bringing full economic possibilities to not just our
populations but to the region and to other countries. So at today's strategic dialogue,
we dove into these, as I mentioned, to all of those topics. And we talked about how to
increase our energy cooperation, our efforts with respect to climate change and other issues.
Let me highlight a couple of the outcomes from our discussion today. First, we reaffirmed
that the United Sates and India share a very specific and similar vision for peace, democracy,
and stability in Asia and in the Indian and Pacific oceans. We welcome the strong leadership
that India plays today both in the region and on the global stage, and there is more
of it we can do together. Both of our countries support a stable, democratic, united, sovereign,
and prosperous Afghanistan. We are grateful for India's investment in Afghanistan and
support and help. And we support India's bilateral economic assistance programs with Afghanistan,
with its private sector investment and its leadership and promoting regional economic
integration.
I think it's safe to say that our economic engagement has seen tremendous progress in
the last decade. And since that time, trade between the United States and India has grown
fivefold. Just in the years of the Obama Administration, investment between our countries has grown
by a factor of 10. And last year, we almost topped $100 billion in two-way trade in goods
and services, and we are on track to do even better this year in 2013. It's a good start,
but both of us agreed today that we can do better. We can do even more. We can break
down trade and investment barriers, and I was particularly appreciative of the productive
discussion that we had on those issues.
India is currently reviewing the text of its bilateral investment treaty model, and we
agreed today to try to look forward and move forward on that model as soon as possible.
We had a productive dinner last night with business leaders from the United States and
India, and I look forward to welcoming India's ministers of commerce and finance to the United
States for the CEO forum that I will host at the State Department on July 12th. I was
also pleased that the United States and India reaffirmed our commitment to full and timely
implementation of the civil nuclear deal. We welcome particularly the attention of Westinghouse
and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India to arrive at a commercial agreement, and we
agreed that that commercial agreement should be arrived at by September of this year.
I have been a strong, personal advocate of this civil agreement since I came here a number
of years ago and engaged with Prime Minister Singh and then with our Congress, and we shepherded
it through our committee ultimately and was pleased that it was accepted. I will continue
to be a strong advocate.
We also talked today about the common threat of terrorism. Democratic societies such as
ours have obviously suffered at the hands of terrorist groups. We are open. We are more
open than others. We welcome people to our countries. And at our Homeland Security Dialogue
in Washington last month and here in the Strategic Dialogue today, we discussed ways that we
can further cooperate on keeping our country safe. I spoke extensively last night about
the imperative for both the United States and India to act forcefully and cooperatively
on the subject of climate change.
Climate change grows more urgent. The science grows more compelling, and it screams at us,
all of us, to take action. There is no country in the world that does not experience some
of the impact of climate change already. Together India and the United States are undertaking
clean energy research. We are collaborating on development efforts, and together we believe
we can do more to work on climate change. To that end, we agreed today that we would
create a working group which Minister Khurshid and I will coordinate within our respective
governments, in order to intensify our efforts to find out ways that we can bilaterally join
together in order to address the urgency of climate change.
I might add that led by the very, very vibrant diaspora, the Indian-American diaspora, we
have seen our exchanges, our travel, our higher education cooperation, greatly expand. And
we want to take that, too, to another level. As large and as prosperous as our democracies
are, both the United States and India know that transformative change takes a certain
amount of time. But we are both countries of innovators and big thinkers. You see that
in the remarkable accomplishments of technology and of other efforts in India in the last
years. We also have vibrant civil societies. We welcome that, and we have a vibrant free
press. We share common values and goals, and we both share the will and the determination
to keep pressing forward towards positive change.
So I am convinced that the U.S.-India friendship, as President Obama said, is one of the defining
partnerships of the 21st century. And today, I believe we laid a path for helping to make
certain that everybody understands that. We made a long list of items that we need to
follow up on, and we are undertaking to create an action plan so that these won't just be
words, that they will be policies and programs that will be implemented that can improve
the lives of both of our people, and hopefully, in keeping with our values and our spirit,
improve the lives of our neighbors around the world.
Thank you, Mr. Minister.
MODERATOR: We will now have questions. The first question is from Paarull Malhotra, CNN-IBN.
QUESTION: Good afternoon. My first question is to Minister Khurshid. Minister Khurshid,
the same companies that actually refused to engage with India on fighting privacy issues,
basically give that kind of information to the U.S., to give the U.S. access to private
emails and to other (inaudible) communication records. Is that cause for concern? Did you
raise this with Secretary Kerry? What was his response?
And to Secretary Kerry, do you think this is a case of double standards - one set of
standards for American citizens and their right to privacy, another set of standards
for the rest of us?
SECRETARY KERRY: I honestly heard - your microphone was such that the microphone I couldn't really
hear. Just come up a bit so I can hear your question better, because it was reverberating.
I apologize.
QUESTION: Would you like me to repeat the question for Minister Khurshid as well (inaudible)?
EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER KHURSHID: I sort of understood. Please repeat it for the Secretary.
QUESTION: Yeah. We were talking about the fact that the same companies that actually
refused to respond to India's heightened privacy issues give access to the U.S., access to
private emails, secure communication records. So to Mr. Khurshid, my question is if that
was a concern, did you raise this with Secretary Kerry? And what was his response?
And Secretary Kerry, do you think there are double standards at play here - one set of
standards for Americans and their right to privacy, another set of standards for the
rest of us?
EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER KHURSHID: Well, let me just - I think saying, "Have you raised
it with Secretary Kerry" might not be the correct way of looking at it. This is an area
we are both interested in and we discussed it. We discussed it and I think it's important
to keep a distinction in mind - I'm sure Secretary Kerry will tell you from the American point
of view - but to keep a distinction in mind is to get access to content of communications
is one thing, and being able to study by way of computer software patterns of communications,
whether that's emails or telephone calls, is two different things. And I think the President
of the United States has already spoken of this and has indicated their information that
- in several countries, terrorist strikes were prevented because of some of this work
that they have been able to do. Now the issues of privacy and the issues of reciprocity,
et cetera, are issues that we will all keep in mind, and these are matters that engage
our attention on both sides, and we are constantly in touch and that there is need for anything
to be brought to the notice of either side, it will be done so.
But to that extent, I think we look forward to discussion amongst many other things that
we have discussed, a meaningful discussion briefly took place on this as well.
SECRETARY KERRY: I am really glad you asked that question, and I'm very, very happy to
answer it. And I want to answer it very, very carefully because there's an enormous amount
of misinformation. There's an enormous amount of misunderstanding about what the program
is in the United States. And I will proudly, proudly and forcefully, defend the civil liberties
and the protections of those civil liberties of the United States and of India and of other
democracies over every other country in the world. We take painstaking efforts, sometimes
at the expense of endangering ourselves, to protect the rights of people.
And the fact is that this law that is utilized in the United States does not look at content.
It does not look at individual emails. It does not listen to peoples' telephone conversations.
It is a random survey by computer of anybody's telephone, of just the number, not even a
name - no name associated with it. And it takes those random numbers and looks at whether
those random numbers are connected to other numbers that they know by virtue of other
intelligence or other things that have happened, are linked to terrorists in places where those
terrorists operate. And only then, only then, can they take that information if it shows
an adequate linkage that will meet a high standard of law. They then go to a judge in
a special court and ask that court for permission, meeting the standard of the law, to be able
to go further in the investigation.
Now all three branches of the American government, the Executive Branch, the Judiciary, and the
Legislative Branches, were aware of this program, were part of this program by virtue of either
a vote, or implementing it, or passing on it as the Judiciary. And in so doing, the
evidence has shown, from our FBI, from our intelligence community, that we have avoided
terrorist acts, and we have saved lives.
Now regrettably, we live in a world that is more dangerous because there are some people
who prefer to kill people randomly rather than to enter a political system and offer
a program to try to make a change. Just today I was driving along in the streets here in
Delhi and I was remarking how different it is today to see guards and barbed wire and
people having to guard buildings and so forth, things that we didn't live with years ago.
And this is true in country after country after country. I see security in front of
the Capitol of the United States of America, where once I used to be able to walk in at
will. Now there are barricades and police officers holding machine guns because some
people don't choose to participate in democracy.
Now I believe that we have done is put in place a program that meets the highest standards
of scrutiny and the highest tests of civil liberties, and there is a balance in this
world we live in. When the marathon bombers bombed in Boston Massachusetts in April, one
of the first questions that was being asked was, "Why didn't you guys notice that they
were in touch with radical websites? How come you didn't track them and know that they were
being radicalized when they went to Russia or wherever they went?" And the answer is:
Because we don't look at their emails without the sufficient legal justification to do it.
So this is a dangerous and complicated world we all live in, and I believe that the program
the United States has pursued is a very judicious balance of civil rights, civil liberties,
but also of the right of people to live free from being killed by terrorists, and the right
we have to be able to protect people in the effort to do that.
MS. PSAKI: The next question will be from Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post.
QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, the Obama Administration and you personally have invested
a great deal in the U.S. relationship with Russia and China and have indicated previously
that things are on a good track forward. What does the Snowden incident tell you about the
strength of those relationships and the possibility of future cooperation? Have you asked Russian
authorities specifically to prevent Mr. Snowden's departure from Moscow, and if so, what's been
the response? Have you spoken to Mr. Lavrov in the past two days?
In the case of China, why did the State Department wait for nearly a week after the arrest warrant
was issued to revoke his passport, and when was the Hong Kong Government informed?
And finally, what response have you gotten from Latin American countries you have appealed
to to deny Mr. Snowden entry?
And I have one question for the Minister. Neither of you spoke really about immigration
reform in the United States. Could you outline India's concerns on that issue and indicate
what reassurances you received from Secretary Kerry? Thank you.
SECRETARY KERRY: Well, with respect to the response of Latin American countries, all
appropriate countries have been notified with respect to the status - his status legally.
And that is the appropriate step to take, to put them on notice that he is an indicted
- he is an indicted individual, indicted with three felony accounts, and that he is wanted
by the legal process of the United States. And those countries are now on notice about
that. Now historically we've always known there are some countries that play outside
of that process, and we don't know specifically where he may head or what his intended destination
may be.
With respect to his passport, you have to first of all have the notification of the
indictment, and then obviously after the indictment the process got sent. I don't know precisely
when the order was received, but I do know that at the time - apparently at the time,
we are waiting actually for confirmation of that. We don't know where he traveled under
that passport or another passport, we just don't know all the details yet. So I'm waiting
to get those details and obviously I'm a long way from there.
I was in touch with the White House last night and with the State Department. We do have
officials at the State Department - Bill Burns has been in touch with the Russians directly,
and they are on notice with respect to our desires. But with respect to the China-Russia
relationship and where this puts us, it would be deeply troubling, obviously, if they have
adequate notice and not withstanding that they make a decision willfully to ignore that
and not live by the standards of the law. There is a surrender treaty with Hong Kong,
and if there was adequate notice - I don't know yet what the communication status was
- but if there was, it would be disappointing if he was willfully allowed to board an airplane
as a result and there would be without any question some effect, an impact on the relationship,
and consequences.
With respect to Russia, likewise, I again don't know fully yet the determinations or
where they're heading, but I would urge them to live by the standards of the law because
that's in the interests of everybody. In the last two years, we have transferred seven
prisoners to Russia that they wanted. So I think reciprocity and the enforcement of the
law is pretty important. And I suppose there's no small irony here - I mean, I wonder if
Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they're
such powerful bastions of internet freedom. And I wonder if while he was in either of
those countries he raised the questions of internet freedom since that seems to be what
he champions. But evidently, he places himself above the law, having betrayed his country
with respect to the violation of his oath, and I think there are very serious implications
in that.
So we obviously hope countries will live by the standards of the law. When they don't,
they invite other countries to break those standards, and I think it's a very serious
question for all of us in our relationships.