AP only playing host to US President says Minister

Hyderabad, Mar 1: Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister K Rosaiah today clarified in the State Assembly that US President George W Bush was visiting the city on March 3, 2006 on his own and the state government was only playing the role of the host.

Replying to the five-day debate on the budget and referring to the criticism of the Left parties and AIMIM during the debate, Mr Rosaiah said while the previous TDP government had moved heaven and earth to bring the then US President Bill Clinton to Hyderabad, the present government had not even invited the US President to Andhra Pradesh.

He said the state government was informed of Mr Bush's interest in visiting Andhra Pradesh and the state was only playing the host.

Mr Bush is scheduled to attend two programmes in the city. He would interact with four progressive farmers in the Acharya N G Ranga Agriculture University's agriculture farm and try to understand the way in which they were achieving the highest yields through indigenous means.

The US President would also attend an interactive session in the Indian School of Business, to have first hand information about the kind of business education that was being offered in India, as most of the technical support for the US IT industry came from Andhra Pradesh.

UNI