NEW DELHI, Dec 9: India on Thursday expressed serious concerns to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over American arms sales to Pakistan, even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh briefed him on talks with Islamabad over Kashmir.

In his one-to-one meeting with Mr Rumsfeld, Dr Singh strongly expressed India's as yet unrequited desire for transit rights through Pakistan to access Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have said the quest was likely to remain unfulfilled without any progress on the political front between the two countries.

In fact, the transit issue appears to have become so important for New Delhi that it featured in Dr Singh's intervention in parliament on Thursday, a subject he later returned to with Mr Rumsfeld.

While officially both sides gave away little of the talks, first between Mr Rumsfeld and Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and later with Dr Singh, the agenda found echo in the parliamentary proceedings. The government was grilled about the proposed US arms sales to Pakistan and it gave a response which was direct and terse.

India's Junior Foreign Minister Rao Inderjit Singh acknowledged that the US defence department had notified the US Congress of the proposed sale to Pakistan. "These include eight P-3C Orion Maritime Surveillance Aircraft, six Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems and an ammunition complement of 2000 TOW-2A missiles and 14 TOW-2A fly-to-buy missiles," Mr Inderjit Singh told the Rajya Sabha.

"India's strong concern in this regard has been conveyed at high levels to the US government," he said. "The repercussions of such sales on the ongoing India-Pakistan dialogue, currently poised at a sensitive juncture, were brought out by us.

Such transfers of arms to Pakistan at a time when Indo-US relations saw significant transformation and when US is perceived in India as strategic partner will impact on the positive sentiments and goodwill that has come to characterize Indo-US relations," Mr Inderjit Singh said.

Yet, Prime Minister Singh used his meeting with Mr Rumsfeld to convey his eagerness to receive US President George W. Bush in New Delhi sometime early next year. According to the Indian prime minister's office, "Dr Singh reiterated his commitment to building peace, security and stability in South Asia and to India's willingness to discuss all outstanding issues with Pakistan as long as Pakistan remains committed to President Pervez Musharraf's January 6, 2004 assurance to check cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir."

Also, Dr Singh welcomed the peaceful conduct of elections in Afghanistan and expressed the hope that elections would also be conducted in Iraq. In response to Mr Rumsfeld's observation that India had been 'very generous' in extending assistance and support to Afghanistan, Dr Singh said: "We can do a lot more to help in Afghanistan if we are given transit facilities by Pakistan.

Transit facilities are a normal right extended by neighbours to each other in all civilized societies". Mr Mukherjee said India welcomed Mr Rumsfeld's visit and that he had useful discussions with him.

At a joint press conference with Mr Mukherjee, Mr Rumsfeld recalled that the first thing he did when he became Secretary of Defence four years ago was to meet representative of the Indian government to express "my conviction that it was important that our two countries developed a stronger and stronger cooperative relationship over the past four years."

"The military-to-military and defence-to-defence relationship is a strong one and something that we intend to see is further knitted together as we go forward in the months and years ahead...

We have had excellent discussions this morning. As the minister says we have run over our time by a good segment. But we have discussed all of the kinds of things that are important to our two ministries," Mr Rumsfeld said.