The visa issue will “top our agenda” when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US President Barack Obama in Washington at the end of the month, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Monday.

Asked what will be different between the previous Indian government and the Modi Government talking to the US Administration, the Minister shot back: “This time a strong government will be talking to Obama. That will make all the difference.”

“I had raised this issue when Senator John Kerry visited India. We will raise the issue with President Obama also,” she told newspersons in her maiden media interaction after she assumed office.

Modi and Obama will also talk about a “wide range of issues” including infrastructure, manufacturing, defence and security cooperation, she added.

There has been an increase in the rate of US visas (H1B and L categories) rejection faced by Indian IT professionals, and Delhi has discussed this issue with Washington earlier, too. The US accounts for over half of India's software exports of around $118 billion at present.

The visa rejection issue has affected IT majors such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro as well as over 45,000 IT-related professionals travelling between the two countries.

Software industry body Nasscom has been meeting the concerned ministry on the problems faced due to short-term visa delays and rejections. Asked why five US Secretaries had come visiting since the Modi Government took office, Swaraj said: “India is a large democracy and after a gap of 30 years we have a government which has a clear majority and is a strong government.”

On expectations from the forthcoming visit of Chinese President Xi Jingping, she said: “We expect a substantive and positive outcome from the visit.”

When asked about the possibility of a meeting between Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the United Security Council meeting in New York later this month, the Minister said: “As the situation emerges we will respond. We are not going with a pre-determined mindset.”

In the three months since the BJP had assumed power, the Government had been “proactive, strong an d sensitive” in the arena of foreign policy, she added.

Agencies report

Swaraj also announced that India will be shortly organising an Indo-African Summit where, for the first time, all the African countries will be invited.

She further said she will be visiting Afghanistan for talks in two days. “With this visit, we would have visited four of the eight countries, which form the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), within three months of coming into office,” she said.

The External Affairs Minister had earlier visited Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The other countries that make up the SAARC, apart from India, are the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

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