The US has expressed hope that its National Security Agency’s surveillance on the BJP would not have an adverse impact on its bilateral ties with India. “We certainly hope not,” State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters when asked about the strong protest lodged by India against the spying on the BJP by the NSA. The BJP figured in the list of foreign political parties along with Lebanon’s Amal, the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator of Venezuela, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian National Salvation Front and the Pakistan Peoples Party for whom the NSA had sought permission to carry out surveillance, according to documents made public by the Washington Post. “We look forward to continuing discussion on a full range of bilateral and regional issues. There has been an invitation issued for a visit, and we are looking forward to that, hopefully in the fall,” she said in reference to the possible September visit to the US by PM Narendra Modi. Psaki said US diplomats met Indian officials in this regard, but “I am not going to get into the substance of our private conversations.” She refrained from confirming if the BJP has been taken off the list of political organisations that is being spied upon by the NSA.
