Modi says Australia at centre of our thoughts, Abbott calls India 'emerging superpower'

Washington, Feb 19: US President Donald Trump has said he is "saving the big deal" with India for later and he "does not know" if it will be done before the presidential election in November, clearly indicating that a major bilateral trade deal during his visit to Delhi next week might not be on the cards.

"We can have a trade deal with India. But I'm really saving the big deal for later," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews Tuesday afternoon (local time).

The US and India could sign a "trade package" during the visit, according to media reports.

Asked whether he expects a trade deal with India before the visit, Trump said, "We're doing a very big trade deal with India. We'll have it. I don't know if it'll be done before the election, but we'll have a very big deal with India."

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the point-person for trade negotiations with India, is likely to not accompany Trump to India, sources said. However, officials have not ruled it out altogether.

In an apparent dissatisfaction over US-India trade ties, Trump said, "We're not treated very well by India." But he praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said he is looking forward to his visit to India.

"I happen to like Prime Minister Modi a lot," Trump said.

"He told me we'll have seven million people between the airport and the event. And the stadium, I understand, is sort of semi under construction, but it's going to be the largest stadium in the world. So it's going to be very exciting... I hope you all enjoy it," he told reporters.

Meanwhile, the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) in a report said the latest quarterly data depict continuation of overall positive bilateral trade trends. The third quarter data reflects some downslide in growth rates.

"It may be due to several reasons, including the unexpected economic slowdown in India's economic growth, impact of US-China trade war, GSP withdrawal from the US side and retaliatory tariffs on specific US goods from the Indian side," USISPF said.

According to the report, the data available for the first three quarters of 2019 (January-September) pulled the overall growth rate in cumulative bilateral trade down to 4.5 percent from 8.4 percent registered for the first two quarters.

Goods and services trade performance in third quarter was dismal at -2.3 percent, in contrast with the impressive 9.6 percent growth witnessed for the first two quarters of the year; while trade in services was up two percent goods trade dropped five percent, the report said.

The cumulative US-India trade in goods and services (USD 110.9 billion) for the first three quarters of 2019 increased 4.5 percent with US exports and imports growing at four percent and five percent respectively.

The US exported USD 45.3 billion worth of goods and services to India in the first three quarters 2019, up 4 percent from the corresponding period in the previous year; and the US imported USD 65.6 billion worth of goods and services from India, up five percent from the previous year's USD 62.5 billion level for the same period, it said.

The USISPF has projected that the total bilateral trade can touch USD 238 billion by 2025 if the current 7.5 percent average annual rate of growth sustains; however, higher growth rates can result in bilateral trade in the range of USD 283 billion and USD 327 billion.

The US remains the top trading partner for India in terms of trade in goods and services, followed by China. While the bilateral trade between US and India is approximately 62 percent in goods and 38 percent in services, the bilateral trade between India and China is dominated by goods.

China had a huge trade surplus of USD 58 billion with India, indicating Beijing's strength in the Indian market, especially in sectors, such as electronics, machinery, organic chemicals, plastics and medical devices.

The US goods exports to India, in comparison, were mainly concentrated in mineral fuels, precious stones, and aircraft. The US faces tough competition with China in the Indian market in areas such as electronics, machinery, organic chemicals and medical devices.

Washington, Jan 25: US President Donald Trump's legal team was preparing his defence on Saturday after the Democratic prosecutors ended their marathon 24-hour argument to oust him from office during the Senate trial.

In the arguments spread over three days ending on Friday, the Democrat prosecutors from the House of Representatives that had impeached Trump last month, mostly rehashed the testimonies from the hearings before their committees during the investigation and statements in their chamber.

Like the Democrats' arguments, the Trump defence's counter-arguments, also with 24 hours allotted for it, will be mind-numbing monologues for the most part and the real drama will be on a tussle between the two parties on calling witnesses.

The Democrats failed in their repeated attempts on the first day of the trial on January 28 to include calling testimonies from witnesses in the rules of procedure, but they will get another chance to press their case when the defence rests.

There is a tense wait speckled with speculations to see if the Democrats can get four Republicans to defect and vote to call witnesses after failing to sway a mass defection to get the two-thirds majority to convict Trump.

Trump is charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in the trial presided over by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts with the Senators acting as jurors.

As the time allotted for the prosecution wound down on Friday, the leading prosecutor, Adam Schiff, demanded that the Republican-controlled Senate convict and remove Trump from office, because he was an "imminent threat" to the US and the nation could not wait for the election to throw him out.

Schiff, who heads the House Intelligence Committee that investigated Trump, gave them a personal warning: "No matter how close you are to this president, do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn't ask you to be investigated?

Jerry Nadler, the head of the Judicial Committee that framed the charges in the impeachment, called Trump a "dictator".

Instead of a full sitting of eight hours, the defence will present its case for only two to three hours on Saturday in what Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow called a "trailer (for) coming attractions" in the defence counterarguments.

They will get to use their remaining time next week.

The shorter session starting with fuller presentations next week is partly a concession to media savvy Trump who tweeted that daytime Saturday when his defence was slated is a "death valley" on TV as few viewers would watch a political event at that time.

With Trump certain to be acquitted because the Democrats do not have the two-thirds vote, the impeachment process and the Senate trial are only meant to be an extended media show in their campaign for the November election.

The Democrats want to spiff up the TV spectacle by calling former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Trump's acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney as witnesses.

Trump could exercise his executive privilege to stop them from testifying, in which case they could go to court to compel their appearance at the Senate trial extending its duration by months if not weeks.

The House charged him with obstruction of Congress because he refused to allow some of this staff to testify and release documents requested by the House investigators.

The Republicans, who want a quick end to the trial, can also counter the Democrats' request for witnesses by calling former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, to testify in order to embarrass them and their party.

The Bidens are at the root of the abuse of power charges against Trump.

Trump had asked newly-elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelentsky in a July phone call to investigate the Bidens' dealings in his country as a "favour".

Democrats say that this was inviting foreign intervention in US elections because Joe Biden is the leading Democratic party candidate for the nomination to oppose him.

Moreover, they say that he froze about $400 million in Congressionally-approved military aid for pressure Zelentsky to order the probe and this endangered US national security as Ukraine is at war with Russia.

chiff and the other prosecutors said delaying the aid was an attempt at a quid pro quo.

Zelentsky has said that he did not feel pressured by Trump.

Hunter Biden, who was removed from the Navy allegedly due to drug use and had no energy business experience landed a directorship in a Ukrainian gas company with monthly payments reportedly between $50,000 and $83,000 while his father was overseeing Washington's dealings with Kiev.

The former Vice President has publicly admitted that he got the Ukrainian leaders to fire the prosecutor investigating his son's company.

The Republicans have said that the son's appointment was unethical and the father had the prosecutor removed to protect his son's company.

In their arguments, the Democratic prosecutors said there was nothing wrong in Hunter Biden getting the job and his father had the prosecutor dismissed because he was corrupt.

The defence team is expected to assert that Trump withheld the aid because he wanted to be sure that the new government was not corrupt and the aid was released without a probe.

Anticipating the argument, Schiff said that Trump had allowed the aid to go forward only because it became known and his intent still made him guilty.

In another development impinging on the Trump case, a secret recording said to be of the president ordering the firing of Marie Yovanovitch as US ambassador to Ukraine in 2018 has surfaced.

She was one of the witnesses at the House investigations of the charges against Trump.

Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.

The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.

Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.

Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.

In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.

In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."

According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.

The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.