Commonwealth Games a national pride for India: Nirupama Rao

New Delhi, Aug 16 (ANI): Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has described the Commonwealth Games, which are going to be held in New Delhi as an event of national pride.

"Organising Commonwealth is a matter of national pride and prestige. As far as the participating countries and delegations are concerned, the Government has kept them fully briefed about all the issues, about infrastructure and security to assure them that preparations are on track and we are committed to holding a very successful Commonwealth Games," Rao said in an interview to All India Radio.

She further said that allegations of corruption had not had much of an effect on the image of the Games abroad.

'I hope the Commonwealth Games will be successfully conducted as preparations are in full swing,' she added.

On the issue of July 15 Indo-Pakistan talks, Rao said: " would, by no means describe the visit of the External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to Islamabad in July as failure. Because it was not a failure. Our relations with Pakistan are complex."

"The visit helped to promote understanding of each other's point of view on issues of mutual interests and concerns," she added.

"Despite the fact that there were differences on a few issues and I do not deny that given the complexity of this relationship, one must be aware of the fact that differences cannot be bridged in one meeting alone. But we had a good understanding on many other issues," she said.

On US President Barack Obama's visit to India in early November, Rao said it was an important and definitive visit during which the two countries will have wide-ranging talks on bilateral and regional issues.

"There has been a steady improvement of our relations with the US over the last decade and we intend to move ahead on a broad range of issues," she added

She said the visit would further strengthen the strategic partnership between the biggest and largest democracies of the world.

On India-China ties, Rao said the two countries will hold another round of talks soon to discuss the border issue and maintained some progress was made in last 13 rounds of parleys.

"The nature of our interaction with China has grown enormously over the past few years; and in particular economic exchanges between India and China have grown exponentially," she added. (ANI)