"This administration believes that what happens in Afghanistan and Pakistan is of vital interest to our national security, and ...that India is a country that we must keep in closest consultation with," Holbrooke said. He said he talked to Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, after his arrival in India.
Burns "is carrying a presidential letter to the Indian government. He is carrying the messages that I would have carried if I had the time to go to Delhi on this trip but I couldn't do it." Holbrooke added: "We consider India an absolutely critical country in the region. They are vitally effective and we want to work closely with them."
In Delhi, Burns held talks with Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon in the first formal contact between Obama's administration and New Delhi's recently-elected government. The United States has been encouraging India to restart dialogue with Pakistan, stalled since last November's attacks on Mumbai in which 166 people were killed.
Holbrooke said during a visit to Delhi in April that the threat posed by al Qaeda and its allies can be met only with the joint efforts of arch rivals India and Pakistan, as well as the United States. But Holbrooke stressed that Washington had no intention of pushing New Delhi into resuming a peace dialogue with fellow nuclear power Islamabad.