Ashish Kumar Sen

President George W. Bush’s administration is “fully prepared” to submit details of a civilian nuclear agreement with India to the US Congress as soon as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government clears the remaining political hurdles in New Delhi.

US President George W. Bush telephoned Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani early on Tuesday morning and urged him not to let Pakistan’s support for the war on terror waver.

External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday admitted that efforts by the Manmohan Singh government’s Left partners to delay a civilian nuclear deal with the United States are “testing our patience.”

External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee today reiterated New Delhi’s interest in implementing a landmark civilian nuclear deal with Washington, but admitted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition government was dealing with some “political problems”.

When India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee meets US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice here on Monday he will be reminded that Washington is eager to wrap up a civilian nuclear agreement and that delays in Delhi are not helping matters.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday night said it fired two contractors and disciplined a third for accessing the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday defended the Iraq war as "noble, necessary and just" and predicted victory even as anti-war groups demonstrated across the U.S. on the fifth anniversary of the start of the invasion.

The police on Thursday charged a suspect in the murder of Abhijit Mahato, an Indian student from Tatanagar who was studying at Duke University in North Carolina.

Last week, Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee told Outlook it was not possible for a minority government to sign a major deal. To seek Washington's response to this, we interviewed the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, Richard Boucher, who has invested considerable time and energy in the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement. In a conversation with Ashish Kumar Sen, Boucher expressed opinions quite different from Pranab Mukherjee's.

Four Indian students have been killed at US universities in a span of less than a year. The violent deaths, a small part of the growing number of campus casualties, have shocked students across the country and raised questions about their safety.

Muslim rights groups are calling on the US Congress to censure a Republican lawmaker for his racist comments about Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama won a convincing victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Mississippi primary on Tuesday extending his lead over the former First Lady.

Senator Barack Obama on Monday dismissed his rival's suggestions of a "dream ticket" and made it clear he was not running for vice- president of the USA.

Republican senator John McCain, who clinched his party’s presidential nomination on Tuesday, was at the White House on Wednesday morning to pick up a key endorsement from President George W. Bush.

As the U.S. and Indian governments scramble to push the civil nuclear agreement towards the finish line, the non-proliferation lobby in Washington is attempting to throw yet another spanner in the works.

Arizona Senator John McCain clinched the Republican Party’s presidential nomination on Tuesday night, while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton kept her campaign alive by winning key states in the primary elections. Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama won easily in Vermont but lost to Clinton in Rhode Island, Texas and Ohio. Clinton’s victory in Rhode Island broke Obama’s streak of 12 straight wins.