Ahead of President Barack Obama's high profile visit to New Delhi, the US today said, India's rise on the global stage is in the strategic interest of the US, and the two countries had a lot to gain by high-tech cooperation and innovation. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns told reporters in Washington that the Indo-US partnership has been a genuine bipartisan priority in America for some years now. He said, over the last decade, through three administrations of both the countries and two Indian governments of different parties, they have transformed the relationship. Mr Burns said, President Obama has termed the relationship a defining partnership of the 21st century. Welcoming India's signing of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation at Vienna, he said, Washington looks forward to US companies contributing to civil nuclear development in India and noted that the two countries are making progress on cooperation in space and updating export controls. Terming the two countries as natural partners, Burns said, both are the world's two largest democracies and are big, diverse, tolerant societies, besides having the distinction of the world's largest economies. He said, both have an increasing stake in global stability and prosperity, especially across Asia and the Pacific. Noting that defence cooperation between the two nations is expanding in ways that were hard to imagine a decade ago, Burns said, India now holds more defence exercises every year with the US than it does with any other country. He said, today, there are more than One Lakh Indian students in American universities, more than from any other single foreign country and about 30 lakh Indian-Americans play a very vibrant role in American society. Noting that bilateral trade has quadrupled in the last decade, Burns said, the fact that the president will spend three days in India, the longest single foreign visit of his presidency so far, underscores the significance of the ties. He also pointed out that India is the first stop on a trip to four major Asian democratic partners. Briefing jointly with Burns, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes said, its relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero sum game. He however added that the Obama Administration has always welcomed dialogue between India and Pakistan and certainly encouraged efforts to improve relations between those two very important countries.