Holbrooke said the previous US administrations of Bill Clinton and George W Bush had worked very hard in development and improvement of Indo-US relations which was bearing positive results.

Those discussions focused on bilateral areas like trade, investment and nuclear issue, he said.

"In entire process, we never really had sufficient talks with India on regional and global strategic issues and that was the missing factor. And that is what Admiral Mullen and I have come here to accelerate," he said.

Mullen said India is a "vital leader" in the region and is playing a critical role in many positive ways. "We recognise that."

The top US military official underlined that regional challenges of South Asia need regional solutions.

"The challenges we have in Afghanistan, strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, military power alone is useless. It is civilian-military team that is so important, good governance along with security," he said.