After initially ignoring the significance of US President Barack Obama’s visit to India, the British press took note of the visit on Monday, splashing photos of his tete-a-tete with Prime Minister Narendra Modi over tea, and highlighting progress on the nuclear deal.
The Times and The Daily Telegraph ignored the visit, while The Guardian reported from New Delhi how India extended a ‘royal welcome’ to Obama. The Independent report highlighted agreement over the nuclear deal.
The only other leading newspaper that covered the visit on Monday was Financial Times, which had a report from New Delhi as well as a comment by columnist Edward Luce, titled ‘Obama’s savvy bet on India’s rise’. Luce wrote: ‘America’s ability to adjust to a multipolar world will be shaped by whether New Delhi and Washington get along. The fact that Mr Obama has hit it off with Narendra Modi...speaks volumes’.
‘The rise of India is a geopolitical fact of our time. The manner in which it rises is critical to the future of the world’, he wrote.
Expressing doubts that Obama could pull off a climate change deal with India the way he did with China last year, Luce noted that ‘as noisy democracies, the US and India are the two rogue orators of global deals. Neither can be trusted to ratify what their diplomats have agreed. Both hammer out deals that their legislatures the refuse to sign’.
{{/usCountry}}Expressing doubts that Obama could pull off a climate change deal with India the way he did with China last year, Luce noted that ‘as noisy democracies, the US and India are the two rogue orators of global deals. Neither can be trusted to ratify what their diplomats have agreed. Both hammer out deals that their legislatures the refuse to sign’.
{{/usCountry}}