Clinton visits, lawmakers climb over benches, Bush get's protests, India

[cal04]

When President Bush lands in India early Wednesday, he will encounter an ever ambivalent American ally with one important difference from the past: this India has new power to assert its views, some of which align with Mr. Bush's agenda and some of which do not. Much has changed, in fact, since the last visit here by an American president, in 2000, when President Clinton's address to the Indian Parliament was received so enthusiastically that lawmakers climbed over benches to shake his hand.

Facing prospects of protests, President Bush is not expected to address Parliament at all. But that is not to say that India has morphed into an anti-American redoubt. There is still in most quarters enthusiasm for relations. But in the past six years, India has also become a more confident partner — in trade and in America's campaigns against terrorism and nuclear proliferation — which touch India both obliquely and directly as it looks abroad in pursuit of its own interests like never before. Meanwhile, India's endemic prickliness shows no signs of remission.

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The Pew Global Attitudes Project found Indians last year to be among the most cheerful in their appraisal of both the United States and President Bush. In a survey published this week in the Indian newsweekly Outlook, two-thirds of Indians "strongly" or "somewhat" regarded Mr. Bush as "a friend of India," even as 72 percent called the United States "a bully."

In the same survey, conducted by A. C. Nielsen, nearly two-thirds of respondents said India should go its own way and defy American objections on a natural gas pipeline to Iran. Perhaps most striking, fewer than half the Indians surveyed said they would want to "settle down in the U.S." The conflicting currents come as relations between the countries have undergone a revolution, and are more entwined than ever before, making commonplace today what would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/international/asia/28india.html?hp&ex=1141102800&en=b16e1b6c54d1483c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I would think climbing over benches would be extra relevant to a Pew poll

:rofl:

[Catherine Vincent]

2. That's what the freepers will always hate.

President Clinton was pretty much loved and respected (and still is) all over the world unlike their guy. Heh!

[IsItJustMe]

3. Millions of jobs have been out sources there. I would be happy too.

Try to call a technical support line and you'll know what I am talking about.

[Billy Burnett]

4. They took our jobs! (From South Park)

Now they can take our jobs and hate the presdint.

[wisteria]

5. Senator Kerry was over there in January and he was very well received. n't