US, India pledge co-op:
The United States and India agreed on Wednesday to expand defense, science and technology cooperation as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said impeachment would not distract the Trump administration on national security matters
Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper met their Indian counterparts for security talks at the State Department as the House debated impeachment charges against President Donald Trump. The House voted later Wednesday to impeach the president, setting up a Senate trial.
Pompeo said “the noise and silliness” in Washington would not affect the administration’s focus on US national security. The US and India are each dealing with domestic political crises: the US with impeachment, India with widespread protests and violent clashes in India over a new citizenship law. “The world should know that despite all the noise, the chaos, the media asking questions that are completely unrelated to the reason we are here today, that the leaders of our two nations are working diligently to protect the American people, to develop a relationship that’s important strategically for the coming decades between the United States and India,” Pompeo said.
“We won’t let the noise and the silliness in Washington, DC, distract us from that,” he said at a news conference with Esper, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.
Asked whether he would participate as a witness in a Senate trial if the House impeached Trump, Pompeo said he would produce State Department documents and testify if the requests were “appropriate and required by law.” (AP)