Friday, June 10 2005 11:07 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Observing that its ties with New Delhi were on a "fundamentally different" footing than they were a couple of years ago, the US has said it has "de-hyphenated" the India-Pakistan relationship.

"There is no doubt that one of the really biggest changes in recent years is that the US-India relationship is on a fundamentally different footing than it was just a couple of years ago," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview on the Public Broadcasting Network.

"We would like to see that go further," she added.

Rice said a major achievement of the George W Bush Administration was that it had "de-hyphenated the India-Pakistan relationship with a fine and growing relationship with India and we have a firm and growing relationship with Pakistan."

The top US official said the friendship with India has not come at the expense of a friendship with Pakistan and vice versa.

Lauding India as a "big, important, multi-ethnic democracy," Rice noted that it had a significant Muslim population.

"They are all integrating into the society in a way that I think only democracies can integrate varied peoples and different peoples," she said speaking on 'The Charlies Rose Show' yesterday (Jun 9, 2005).

Stating that the US too had its own "troubles" with integrating minorities, Rice said, "We should not be impatient with others".