Indian PM meets US vice president

Visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden Tuesday met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to hold talks on matters of mutual interest, a day after arriving in the national capital on a four-day tour of this country, sources said. Earlier in the day, Biden met Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari and Leader of Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament) Sushma Swaraj. "During his meeting with Ansari, the two leaders discussed matters of mutual interest and international and regional importance. He is also to meet Indian President Pranab Mukherjee," the sources said. Biden, the first American vice president to visit India in three decades, Monday visited a museum dedicated to India's independence icon Mahatma Gandhi and wrote in the visitors' book that it was an "honor and great privilege" to see a place " memorializing one man who changed the world." The U.S. vice president's visit came a couple of months ahead of the Indian prime minister's planned trip to Washington to meet President Barack Obama. "Issues like economic growth, trade, energy and climate change, security and investments in education are on the agenda of discussions between Biden and the top Indian leaders. It will be a kind of groundwork before Singh's visit to the U.S. in September- October," the sources said. During the last leg of his India tour, Biden will go to Mumbai to deliver a speech on the U.S.-India partnership at the Bombay Stock Exchange, and he will also meet top business leaders of this country in the financial capital, the sources said. Biden's wife Jill, who is accompanying him, will visit the iconic Taj Mahal monument in the northern Indian city of Agra, some 250 km from the national capital. The U.S. vice president will wrap up his tour on July 25 from Mumbai and take off for Singapore. "This trip will be an important opportunity to strengthen our partnerships within the region and reaffirm our commitment to re- balancing U.S. foreign policy towards the Asia-Pacific," the White House has said.