Afghan pullout by US must be measured: Modi

He was speaking at the forum of the Council of Foreign Relations. Hours before he is hosted by President Barack Obama, Modi advised the US leadership that withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan should be done in a “slow and calibrated’’ manner or the problems that occurred in Iraq’s case would crop up.

He said terrorism was a phenomenon that needed to be tackled globally and reiterated what he had said in his UNGA address: that no distinctions should be made between “good terrorism’ and “ bad terrorism”.

The Prime Minister also spoke about the fact that in the post-Cold War world, India and the US, as two of the world’s largest democracies, have to keep global interests and not individual interests in mind. He mentioned that while in the US, a visible assimilation of people from all over the world was there; in the case of India, its citizens were themselves assimilated all over the world. “As the largest democracies, India and US have to think what they can do to benefit the world,’’ he added.

Modi also spoke of a major foreign policy issue he addressed on the eve of his departure.

He said India and China were now having a ‘’direct” dialogue on the boundary dispute, and needed no form of arbitration for settling it. He said it was now evident to the world that the 21st century belonged to both India and China.

In what is becoming a refrain for him, he spoke about a changing India; the clean Ganga campaign and how he was trying to change the investment environment in India and trying to metamorphose the Indian railway network to attract huge global investments.

On the issue of the status of women in India, he pointed towards External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh, both of whom were present and are part of his entourage, to show how India was empowering women. He pointed out that 25 per cent of the strength of his present Cabinet comprised women.