NEW DELHI: Prime minister Manmohan Singh leaves for a landmark visit to Washington on Saturday. Though there are no big-ticket items on the agenda, it is being pitched as an important event in the diplomatic calendar of both countries.

South block officials say India-US ties have come of age and will not go back to the days when Bill Clinton came to India in March 2000; he was only the fourth American president to do so. His visit was after a gap of 22 years but much has changed since then.

At the heart of the new relationship is the India-US civil nuclear deal which helped to build trust between two nations on the opposite sides of the Cold War divide.

After Clinton, Bush visited India and president Barack Obama is likely to do so in his first term. "High-level visits between India and the US take place at regular intervals. No one should expect a major announcement during each exchange,' an official explained. Having rubbed New Delhi the wrong way by bringing China into the India-Pakistan equation, US officials are going out of their way to placate India and project it as a major global player.

While in Delhi US ambassador Timothy Roemer tried to douse the flames with soothing words, in Washington it was undersecretary of state for political affairs William Burns.

Burns, commenting on Obama and president Hu Jintao's statement in Beijing that the US and China would together support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan, said America was interested in pursuing "the best and healthiest possible partnership with China, but not at the expense of another equally important country, India".

Singh will leave on Saturday for Geneva, where there is a night halt. On Sunday, his entourage reaches Washington, where he will be received at the Andrews air force base. His formal welcome to the White House is on Tuesday and talks with Obama will follow.
A banquet for the prime minister and his delegation is also on the cards.

Vice president Joe Biden and secretary of state Hillary Clinton will host a lunch for the PM. Singh will deliver a major address at the Council for Foreign Relations and then meet the Indian community. He will leave for Port-of-Spain for the Commonwealth heads of state summit on November 26.