Excerpts of remarks by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Indian Minister of External Affairs Natwar Singh after their meeting at the State Department on June. 10.

COLIN POWELL: ....Every occasion on which I’ve visited India over the last several years, some three times, I believe, I did have a chance to meet with Mrs. Gandhi, and Natwar was always present at those meetings, as was the Prime Minister. So we know each other and we look forward to working with each other.... In our meeting just now, we discussed the full range of bilateral and regional issues.

NATWAR SINGH: ....As the Secretary said, we had a very frank, wide-ranging, lively, occasionally amusing discussion on every single aspect of our relationship. I have also informed him about the change of government in India and that we intend to continue the policies that we have followed for 57 years. There has been a broad national consensus on India's foreign policy. That will continue. And we’ve hit the road running.... And since the Secretary of State is ten years younger than me, I’ll have to run very hard....

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, India has strongly endorsed the recently passed U.N. resolution on Iraq. Did you bring up the introduction of Indian –– did you request the introduction of Indian peacekeeping forces to Iraq?

POWELL: We are very pleased that the Indian Government showed such strong support for the resolution. And as you know, there are a number of requests out for support to the multinational force effort and we did talk about it, but I would yield to the Minister for what he would care to say about the conversation....

SINGH: ....With regard to the question you asked about the Indian troops, nobody has asked us. We’ll look at the resolution very minutely. We are not in the Security Council. And we'll take a decision when the time comes.... We are a coalition government so the matter will have to be discussed by the government and by the Cabinet Committee on Security. There is a resolution of the last Parliament on this issue in which we had given our opinion that we were against sending troops to Iraq. Now the situation is changed. There is a resolution unanimously passed in United Nations and there are Arab members in it. We’ll look at it very carefully. But I must emphasize that this matter will have to be placed before the government at the highest levels so it would be premature for me to say yea or nay.

QUESTION: As far as terrorism is concerned, as we speak now, Mr. Secretary, terrorism in Kashmir still goes on, as you have been saying in the past that Gen. Musharraf made many promises to you. Terrorism went down, you said.... But it has gone up now, even on the first day of the new government in India.

POWELL: ....I think we have seen that the rate has gone down and we continue to monitor that rate and we continue to express our concern about the infrastructure that remains behind.