Ties with India 'extremely important' for US

WASHINGTON: A White House hopeful from the Republican party has described America's relationship with India and Israel as "extremely important" particularly on counterterrorism issues.

"I believe our real national security needs will be, first and foremost, international economic policy, free trade agreements that will play right back to creating jobs here at home," Jon Huntsman, Republican presidential candidate, told the CNN in an interview.

"And second, counterterrorism, where our relationship with, for example, Israel and India, I think, will be extremely important going forward," he said.

Huntsman also stressed on the need to have an early but responsible withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

"As quickly as you could do it in a safe and systemic fashion, realising full well that we still have a job to do there."

"So I say, let's focus first and foremost on the real threat, it's one of an asymmetric nature that requires intelligence and special forces responses. And beyond that, let's begin to review our real national security needs internationally and building around that," the Republican leader said.