Obama congratulates India's Modi, invites him to US

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama told India's future prime minister Narendra Modi he hopes to work closely with him and invited the once shunned nationalist leader to visit Washington.
Obama telephoned Modi to offer congratulations for his Bharatiya Janata Party's crushing election victory and invited him "to visit Washington at a mutually agreeable time to further strengthen our bilateral relationship."
Obama said "he looks forward to working closely with Mr Modi to fulfill the extraordinary promise of the US-India strategic partnership, and they agreed to continue expanding and deepening the wide-ranging cooperation between our two democracies," the White House said in a statement.
Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, was controversially refused a visa to visit the US in 2005 over allegations he turned a blind eye or worse to riots in the western state three years earlier.
But State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Modi would face no problems visiting India as prime minister as he would receive a special A-1 visa as a head of government.