A top US official on Tuesday said the Obama administration is deeply committed to supporting India's rise and to building the strongest possible partnership between the two countries. William J. Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said: "Never has there been a moment when India and America mattered more to one another."

Burns, the No. 3 official at the State Department, was addressing concerns in some quarters in India that President Barack Obama is not fully committed to a relationship with India due to his administration's preoccupations in India's neighbourhood, specifically Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Burns said realising the full potential of their partnership will require some important choices from both the US and India. "Partnership means more than just having shared values and common interests. It also means developing complementary policies and habits of cooperation," he said.

In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said progress in the US-India partnership requires "continued hard work and vision" on both sides. "It requires patience and creativity. And it requires honesty in dealing head-on with concerns and doubts that arise on both sides," he said.

Noting that neither side could afford to gloss over questions about the other's commitment to the relationship, Burns said, "Some in India do worry today that the United States seeks to 're-hyphenate' relations with India … that we see India mainly through the prism of preoccupations in Afghanistan and Pakistan … that we won't push Pakistan hard enough on terrorists who kill and threaten Indians … that we will hurry toward the exit in Afghanistan and leave India holding the strategic pieces."

He noted that a third of the US cabinet has visited India in the first 16 months of the Obama administration, and Obama himself intends to visit India later this year

He said the US had an interest in better relations between India and Pakistan, but would "not inject ourselves into issues that divide the two governments unless India and Pakistan ask for our help, and we will continue to urge Pakistan to take decisive action against the violent extremists who threaten its own interests as much as they do the security of India and America."

"None of us, least of all Indians and Pakistanis, can afford a resurgence of tensions between two nuclear-armed states. And none of us can afford to see groups with global terrorist ambitions like Lashkar-e-Toiba continue unchecked," he said.

Jerusalem, June 2
Israel said it would complete the deportation of all the pro-Palestinian activists seized in its raid on a Gaza aid flotilla today and vowed to stop other ships from reaching the Hamas-run enclave.

Amid international outrage over the deaths in the interception at sea, Turkey, which has recalled its ambassador from Israel, demanded that it lift its blockade of Gaza as a condition of restoring full ties. “The future of ties with Israel will depend on the attitude of Israel,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak visited commandos who took part in the raid and told them: “I came in the name of the Israeli government to say thank you.”

Israel said it would deport 682 activists from more than 35 countries detained after the assault in international waters on Monday on six aid ships bound for Gaza, where Hamas Islamists opposed to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hold sway.

By midday on Wednesday, about 200 activists had been transferred from a holding centre to Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, a Prisons Service spokesman said, and 123 passed through a border crossing into neighbouring Jordan.

The remaining activists would be released throughout the day, the spokesman said. All have been held incommunicado by Israeli authorities.

In an appeal echoed by Washington, the U.N. Security Council called for an impartial investigation of the deaths. Turkey, which recalled its ambassador in Tel Aviv, said three of the nine dead had been identified as Turks and a fourth had a Turkish credit card. Israel has not named publicly any of those killed. — Reuters

Tokyo, June 2
Japan’s centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama tearfully resigned today, just nine months after a stunning election win, his brief reign derailed by a row over an unpopular US airbase. Hatoyama ended more than half a century of conservative rule in an electoral earthquake last August, but soon earned a reputation for crippling indecision at the helm of the world’s second-biggest economy.

The 63-year-old millionaire, the scion of an influential family dubbed “Japan’s Kennedys”, quit at a meeting of his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), blaming the base dispute and political funding scandals.

“I will step down,” an emotional Hatoyama told party lawmakers at a special meeting in parliament, while also vowing to “create a new DPJ”.

“I apologise to all of you lawmakers here for causing enormous trouble.” Finance Minister Naoto Kan, 63, who is a deputy prime minister, was widely tipped to succeed Hatoyama and in the afternoon declared his intention to take over the party leadership in a vote Friday.

The premier’s rapid demise since he took office in mid-September was driven by the festering dispute over a US Marine Corps airbase on Okinawa island that badly strained ties with the United States, Tokyo’s bedrock ally. — AFP