Bush: U.S. shouldn't see India as threat
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-03 20:25

With U.S.-India relations at their highest mark in six decades, President Bush said Friday Americans should see the rapidly growing nation as a land of opportunity instead of a threat.

"The U.S. will reject protectionism," Bush said here in one of India's high-tech hubs that's driving economic expansion. "We won't fear competition. We welcome competition."

Bush wrapped up his three-day stay in India with a landmark nuclear deal that is the centerpiece of America's new romance with this 1 billion-strong democracy, the world's largest. Later Friday, he was heading to Pakistan for an overnight visit under extraordinary security to a close anti-terror partner struggling with terrorism problems.

Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding along the porous and mountainous border with Afghanistan. And just a day before Bush arrived, a suicide car bomber killed an American diplomat and three others in a strike near the U.S. consulate in the southern port city of Karachi, a hotbed of Islamic militancy, hundreds of miles from Islamabad where the president was staying.

Bush has promised to raise with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf the need to do more to hunt down al-Qaida members. He also will talk about the need for additional democratic reforms.