Back in August, a senator and co-chair of the Senate India caucus raised a symbolic toast to longstanding ties between the U.S. and the world's largest democracy.
"I am proud to say India is one of our nation's strongest allies and friends," John Cornyn, the Republican Senator from Texas said in a message to Indians and Indian Americans....
"India and the United States are cooperating more closely now than ever before, and the relationship between our two nations continues to strengthen and benefit both of us," Cornyn said.
A few months later, a spokesman for President Barack Obama made a similar pronouncement.
Describing India as an important ally of the US, the White House has said the Obama Administration would work with the country to bring peace in the South Asian region.
"I think it goes without saying that India is an important ally," White House [Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington on Friday evening.
Naturally, one might expect such a strong relationship to reveal itself in other ways, especially where strategic interests are concerned.
But things haven't quite worked out that way. As Agence-France Presse reports in "India to Sign New MiG Deal with Russia: Official," India has decided that Russia has more to offer as far as its defensive needs are concerned than the world's largest arms exporter.
NEW DELHI — India and Russia are set to agree a 1.2-billion-dollar deal for 29 MiG-29 fighter jets which will cement Moscow's role as New Delhi's principal arms supplier, an official said Monday.
A senior Indian defence ministry official said the deal was likely to be finalised this week during a visit to New Delhi by a Russian military team. He declined to say when it would be signed.
"The contract has already been negotiated and just some finishing touches are now awaited," the official, who did not want to be named, said.
He put its worth at 1.2 billion dollars and said the planes would be handed over to the Indian navy.
The deal has already been cleared by the cabinet of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who paid a state visit to Russia last month.
The official said the deal would be in addition to 16 MiG-29 planes New Delhi will acquire for deployment on an aircraft carrier it also hopes to obtain from Russia, which supplies 70 percent of Indian weaponry.
The Russian embassy in New Delhi did not respond to queries on the deal.
Relations between India and Russia, currently negotiating arms contracts worth over 15 billion dollars, hit a low following wrangling over the cost of refurbishing the retired aircraft carrier.
Russia in 2004 promised to gift the "Admiral Gorshkov" to India, provided Delhi paid a Russian shipyard 974 million dollars to revamp the vessel.
Since then, the price has skyrocketed for fixing up the 27-year-old ship.
Last year, Russia startled India with a demand for 2.9 billion dollars.
"Now we are closer to an understanding on Gorshkov," the ministry official said without elaborating.
During Singh's trip to Russia in December the countries signed two agreements on arms, one on their two-way weapons trade in the years 2011-2020 and another on servicing Russian-made arms sold to India.
India plans to spend tens of billions on dollars to modernise its military.
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