Washington DC, July 3 -- US defence secretary Pete Hegseth expressed the hope that Washington would clear several pending defence sales to India in the near future, during a meeting with external affairs minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday.

"The United States is very pleased with the successful integration of many US defence items into India's inventory. And building on this progress, we hope we can complete several major pending US defence sales to India, expand our shared defence industrial cooperation and co-production efforts, strengthen interoperability ... between our forces, and then formally sign a new 10-year framework for the US-India Major Defence Partnership ... which we hope to do very soon," Hegseth was quoted as saying by the...