WASHINGTON: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned home after his first White House meeting with US President Donald Trump earlier this week with two solid achievements: a joint warning to Pakistan to stop alleged cross-border terrorist attacks and the recognition of India’s role in Afghanistan.

The Modi-Trump meeting started at 3.30pm on Monday and carried on over to a working dinner, the Trump administration’s first official dinner at the White House for a visiting foreign dignitary.

During Mr Modi’s two-day (June 24-26) stay in Washington, the Trump administration approved a $2 billion sale of naval surveillance drones to India and a $366 million C-17 transport plane. Both governments hope that the two sales will lead to greater cooperation between their militaries.

President Trump also hailed a massive naval exercise they are holding in the Bay of Bengal next month with Japan as the third participant. This annual display — known as Exercise Malabar — aims to curtail China’s growing influence in the Indian Ocean.

On Wednesday, US Vice President Mike Pence said he would soon visit India and meet the officials of an airlines — Spice Jet — which is buying 100 new planes from American aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

President Trump also has accepted Mr Modi’s invitation to visit India.

Dates will be finalised soon.

But the first negative signal for Pakistan came hours before the Modi-Trump meeting when the US State Department designated Kashmiri Syed Salahuddin as a global terrorist. And after the meeting, a joint Indo-US statement urged Pakistan to stop terrorists from using its territories for carrying out cross-border attacks.

“The leaders called on Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks on other countries. They further called on Pakistan to expeditiously bring to justice the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai, Pathankot, and other cross-border terrorist attacks perpetrated by Pakistan-based groups,” said the joint statement, titled “United States and India: Prosperity Through Partnership”.

Under a subtitle, “Shoulder-to-Shoulder Against Terrorism,” the two leaders “resolved that India and the United States will fight together against this grave challenge to humanity” and then named the groups that posed this threat to humanity. The list includes “Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, D-Company, and their affiliates” and the two leaders “committed to strengthen cooperation” between the US and India to combat these groups.

AFGHANISTAN: The joint statement also recognised India’s role in Afghanistan and the US offered to help New Delhi in cementing its ties with Kabul.

The US media, such as CNN, warned that such measures “could jeopardise the US-Pakistan relationship,” but a day before the Modi-Trump meeting a senior White House official insisted that it would not.

“I want to make a point here that US relationships with India and Pakistan really stand on their own merits and terms,” the official said at a special briefing on India-US ties.

“We don’t see a zero-sum relationship when it comes to the US relationship with Pakistan and the US relationship with India.”

While the Trump administration hopes to “deepen” its relationship with India, the official added that they are “also interested in continuing our cooperation with Pakistan”.

The official said that the Trump administration’s priorities and the nature of relationship with the two countries were different.

With India, the US was building a strategic partnership. “We see India’s role and influence growing. We like to encourage that trend. So, we’re looking for ways to cooperate on our mutual interests,” the official said.

“With Pakistan, we seek to have a productive partnership working together. But frankly, the priorities are different, and the nature of the relationships are different. So, I think that we would like to move forward with both countries.”

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2017