"The Obama administration is right to focus on fixing a faltering war in Afghanistan and shoring up a weak and unstable Pakistan. But it has been less attentive to one of the most important bipartisan achievements of the Clinton and Bush years - the creation of a long-term US friendship and partnership with India," said Nicholas Burns, who served as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the previous Administration.

"Few issues will be more important for Americans in the next half century as the global balance of power shifts toward Asia," he said.

"With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington this week, US-India relations have stalled on some critical issues. "Influential Indians complain the Obama administration is diminishing America's prior strategic priority on India to avoid antagonising regional rivals Pakistan and China," Burns said in an op-ed published in the Boston Globe yesterday.

"They worry the Obama team does not embrace the core conviction that India's dramatic rise to global power is clearly in the US interest," he said in the hard-hitting opinion peace published on a day on which the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met US President Barack Obama at the White House.

No doubt, Obama's decision to make Singh the first state visitor of his administration is a positive symbolic gesture, he noted.

"Still, relations between the two countries are strained by important differences on terrorism, climate change, trade, and, potentially, future sanctions against Iran," he said.

"To be fair, India is a difficult and irresolute partner on some of these issues, particularly climate. But, Obama can act more vigorously to restore the energy on India left to him by his predecessors," he said.

In the article published before the issuing of the joint statement, Burns said Obama could offer assistance from America's Midwestern land-grant institutions that were pivotal in achieving historic breakthroughs in Indian food production four decades ago.

Obama could build on common US-India strengths in education and science by proposing more significant cooperation in space research and environmental technologies that would play to the comparative advantage of our private sectors and the 100,000 Indian students in the United States.

Observing that India is a natural military partner of the United States given our common interest in resisting terrorism in South Asia and beyond, Burns said Obama should push for stronger strategic ties between the two countries.

The United States should work more actively behind the scenes to urge India and Pakistan to restore their Composite Dialogue, reduce bilateral tensions, and commit to progress on the Kashmir issue, he said.

And finally as America looks to a future where China's growing power will be a central challenge, building this new US-India partnership is fundamental to all we seek to accomplish in Asia, he added.

Referring to the rise of China and its potential to pose a threat of power imbalance before US, Burns said, "Stronger Indian political and military bonds with the United States, Japan, and Australia are the best way to ensure these democratic powers can balance and limit the potentially dangerous aspects of China's rise in the decades ahead."