India is a 'significant strategic partner', says US Admiral

Describing India as a "significant strategic partner", a top US naval official said on Friday the dialogue between the two countries in the field of strategic and military relationship is "much healthier, more robust and more vigorous" than what was during the 80s.

"The dialogue today is much healthier; it is more robust; it is more vigorous; it is more comprehensive; it is more forthcoming than that I observed in the mid 1980s," said Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the US Pacific Command or PACOM.

Keating, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said India is a "significant strategic partner" for the US, the pacific Command in particular.

Keating would visit India in the next few weeks. Keating  had gone to India in the mid-1980s as a member of the Pacific Command staff and thereafter once more. "Their demographics are significant; their economic engine continues to churn; they are the world's largest democracy, of course, and their national elections are coming up," he said.

All of this, Admiral Keating assured the US lawmakers that military-to-military relations between Pacific Command and India are solid and actually are bearing direct productive fruit.