How PM Modi Will be Greeted at West Wing: 10 Developments

 | Updated: September 30, 2014 13:56 IST

PM Narendra Modi With US President Barack Obama

WASHINGTON:  An Oval Office meeting today with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will be the centerpiece of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-day visit to the White House.

Here are the 10 latest developments in this story:

1. Mr Modi will be greeted with a formal arrival ceremony outside the West Wing.
2. Typically, visiting heads of state spend just a portion of a day at the White House meeting with President Obama and other US leaders. The second day of attention from President Obama is rare.
3. Last night, the PM met President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other key US officials at the White House for dinner. The PM and President Obama sat down under a gilded chandelier in the antique-festooned Blue Room of the White House.
4. The PM sipped only water at the dinner; he is keeping the nine-day Navratri fast that he observes strictly every year.
5. In a joint statement issued after their first meeting at a White House dinner, the two leaders said they would work together on "a transformative relationship as trusted partners".
6. Mr Modi, who was denied a visa to the United States in 2005 on human rights grounds over communal riots in his home state of Gujarat three years before that, has been courted heavily by the US since he took office - several cabinet level delegations have visited him in Delhi.  
7. The United States has been keen to expand business and security ties with India, which it sees as a key counterbalance to an increasingly assertive China in Asia.
8. President Obama has backed Delhi's bid to become a permanent  member of the UN Security Council.
9. As part of an effort to spur foreign investment, the PM met more than a dozen US corporate leaders for breakfast in New York on Monday and told them he is committed to liberalizing India's economy and slashing the country's infamous red tape.
10. Mr Modi said that despite some differences with Washington, the wider relationship could still improve. "It is not necessary we should have comfort in everything, even between a husband and wife, there is never 100 percent comfort," Mr Modi joked at the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday.