New Delhi, May 14: The US wants the next Indian administration to take up three pending military agreements quickly because they will help scale up military relations with Delhi.

A top US military commander who is now in New Delhi urged senior Indian officials to appreciate that it was important that the agreements on information secrecy, end-use verification and turnaround facilities were given priority.

“The foreign secretary (Shiv Shankar Menon) understands our desire to do the deal,” the chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy Keating, said this evening.

Apart from Menon, he also met the chairman, chiefs of staff committee and chief of naval staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, and national security adviser M.K. Narayanan.

The pending agreements are the Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (Cismoa), the End-use Verification Agreement and the Logistics Support Agreement.

The Cismoa binds the two sides to confidentiality of information on military equipment and processes, the end-user verification agreement will authorise the US to inspect and check that India is using US-supplied military equipment for purpose that they are meant and the LSA will allow US ships and aircraft to refuel in India and Indian ships and aircraft to refuel in the US and its bases.

Admiral Keating also said India and US military drills such as the Malabar series of exercises were big learning experiences for both sides. With the signing of the agreements, “we can do even more”.

The Indian military establishment has vetted the deals and is by and large in favour of them. But the Manmohan Singh government, supported for much of its duration by the Left, was hesitant. The urgency for the agreements has only grown now.

The US Pacific Command chief said he envisaged a situation in which China — which had sent a demarche (a diplomatic query) on the Malabar exercise in 2007 — would be invited to send observers for India-US exercises.

Keating also said he and Admiral Mehta shared notes on the growth and expansion of the Chinese navy. They noted, in particular, China’s four-month deployment off the coast of Somalia and its efforts to build an aircraft carrier.