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Clinton may address Indo-US business meet

Either President Bill Clinton or Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will make a keynote speech at the 23rd annual meeting of the United States-India Business Council in Washington on June 4, the main focus of which will be to promote "increased US investment in the technology sectors in India."

Power Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam will represent the Vajpayee government at the conference.

The meeting, which will have representatives of the government and business from the two countries, will discuss and develop solutions for issues that are adversely affecting US investment in India's infrastructure sectors.

It intends to create a forum for US executives to share ideas, network, interact, and further their business relations with senior level Indian business and governments leaders. Besides, it will highlight the "dramatic growth" in Indian technology sectors over the last four years and focus on how that growth will shape US investment in India during the next millennium.

The USIBC will develop policy recommendations related to software, telecom, broadcasting, and the Internet, based on the discussions in this conference and will present these to the US and Indian governments during the summer and fall of 1998.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, the Clinton administration's point person on international financial matters, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, and Overseas Private Investment president George Munoz will address the meeting.

In addition, the USIBC's special conference on 'Policies and Progress: Information Technology in India' will be held in Santa Clara on June 11. It will offer a forum for sharing ideas, networking, interacting and further business relations with senior US and Indian business and government leaders.

Meanwhile, USIBC chairman Howard L Clark, Jr, and chairman-elect Dean R O'Hare, who returned to Washington recently from their tour of India, said in a joint statement on Wednesday night that the new government was committed to continuing and, in some areas, rapidly accelerating the reform process.

They felt that the prospects for stability at the Centre were very good and that opportunity existed to consolidate a US-India partnership that embraced both strategic and economic interests.

"In addition, we have seen that the US government is focusing extraordinary attention on India both in recognition of the strategic opportunity that has emerged, and in anticipation of President Clinton's visit to India later this year," they added.

Clark and O'Hare, during their stay in India, had met Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and members of his ministry, leaders of the opposition in both house of Parliament, their counterparts in the Indian private sector, and the editors of India's most influential newspapers.

UNI