Govt feels outsourcing won't be an issue in ties with US

WASHINGTON: India on Saturday said the incoming Obama Administration in the US has given an assurance to it that the policies to strengthen bilateral ties will continue and felt that outsourcing, a hot topic during the Presidential polls here, will not not be an issue.

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who met former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, deputed by President-elect Barack Obama to meet world leaders currently here for the G-20 summit, said the transition administration gave a lot of assurances that the change in policies started during the Clinton era would continue.

"They assured us that the new Administration would continue to strengthen the relations between the two countries," Ahluwalia told reporters on his meeting with Albright. Democratic Congressman Jim Leech was also present in the meeting.

"We raised things that the (G-20) summit would discuss and tried to ascertain their views," he said.

Ahluwalia said he did not not raise the reported desire of Obama to send former President Bill Clinton as his special envoy on Kashmir. "Neither was it raised nor did we take it up," he said.

To a question on Obama's reported reservations on outsourcing, he said he did not not feel that one could judge what the new Administration would do on the issue just on the basis of what was said in election speeches.