New York: India and the United States are united in their approach to fight global terrorism, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in New York.

"I mentioned to President Bush that as far as the fight against terrorism is concerned, we are fully on board and we will welcome all efforts bilateral, regional and multilateral to deal with this menace to civilisation. On this, there is no disagreement between me and President Bush," Singh told a press conference yesterday (Sep 24, 2004).

He was replying to a question on whether the US and India's fight against terrorism in which it had lost many more lives than America was a seamless, common fight against terror.

On his meeting with President George W Bush on Sep 21 in New York, the Prime Minister said it was a very important event in his programme.

Bush has made a personal contribution in strengthening India-US relations and "I appreciate his meeting me in the midst of his election pre-occupation", he said.

"I conveyed to him our interest in strengthening relationship, particularly its strategic dimension. The conclusion of Phase I of the Next Step in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) just prior to our meeting underlined this message."

"While our discussions covered many issues, the most important were our common commitment to combat terrorism, WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) proliferation and related global threats," Singh said.

"My endeavour, which I believe is reciprocated fully by President Bush, is to build a partnership of cooperation and trust between our two countries.

"By doing so, I believe we would realise the enormous potential of our bilateral ties while working together to make the world a better place," the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister said his meeting with Bush was essentially a meeting to review the State of Indo-US relations.

"Both of us felt these relations are in excellent shape. But we also agreed we cannot be satisfied with the status quo. When I used the words the best is yet to come, the President said, 'Yes I agree with that'. That is the measure of agreement among ourselves," Singh said.

"We reviewed all the efforts we are making, the efforts we are making to normalise our relations with Pakistan in various meetings at the level of Foreign Ministers and Foreign Secretaries. The President expressed satisfaction at the progress we made," he said.

"We also discussed the situation in Afghanistan, in Nepal and Sri Lanka as well."

As far as the next step in Strategic Partnership is concerned, Singh said, "Ever since our Government came into power, there have been intensive discussions between the two Governments."

"The fact that the first step has been accomplished means that some of our important entities like ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) will be off the restricted, embargo list. That certainly is a new beginning in the promotion of flows of high technology to our country."