The announcements gave Clinton tangible accomplishments as she ended a trip to India designed to deepen ties and to demonstrate US President Barack Obama's commitment to India's emergence as a player on the global stage. In a clear gesture of US favour, Clinton said that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had accepted her invitation to make a state visit to Washington on November 24 in what would be the first such visit by a foreign leader under Obama.
The centrepiece of the visit was the announcement that the two sides reached an "end-use monitoring" pact that Clinton said would pave the way to broader defence co-operation. Required by US law for the sale of sophisticated weapons systems, the pact would let Washington check that India was using any arms for the purposes intended and was preventing the technology from leaking to others.
India is expected to spend more than $30 billion over the next five years on upgrading its largely Soviet-made arsenal, roughly a third of which will be a contract to buy 126 multi-role fighters.
That could prove a boon to US companies like Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. The two companies are competing with Russia's MiG-35, France's Dassault Rafale, Sweden's Saab JAS-39 Gripen and the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish firms.
SHOWING CONTINUITY The defence pact, unveiled by Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Clinton, was not formally signed because it takes the form of agreed language to be included in contracts for future defence sales, a US official said.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Clinton stressed Obama's desire to follow the path of former US Presidents Bill Clinton, her husband, and George W. Bush in building strong US-India ties. "We will work not just to maintain our good relationship, but to broaden and deepen it," she said.
Analysts said both countries wanted to dispel any belief that the Obama administration might have neglected India in its early months, especially as it focused on getting Pakistan's military to battle insurgents on its western border with Afghanistan.