US Republican presidential nominee Donald Tump praised India in an exclusive interview to NDTV.
Highlights
- Have great respect for Hindus, they are amazing entrepreneurs: Trump
- Will do extreme vetting to fight terrorism, control who comes in: Trump
- On India-Pak conflict says, 'Hope everything works out.'
In the last weeks of a fiercely-contested election, Donald Trump made an unusual stop - a meeting organised by a group calling itself the Hindu Republican Coalition in New Jersey.
On the sidelines of the event, he gave an exclusive interview to NDTV. "I have great respect for Hindus. I have so many friends that are Hindu. They are great people, amazing entrepreneurs," he said.
Prodded why only Hindus, he said, "I'll be honest, I have great respect for India. I actually have (real estate) jobs going up in India. (It's) tremendously successful. It is an amazing country."
The theme of the event was the fight against terrorism - one of Mr Trump's subjects.
But he has been vague about the details.
"We have to have extreme vetting before we let people in," he said.
When asked if he has given up his plan to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, he said, "Something is going on that's not a positive force. We are going to be looking very much at certain areas of the world. We have to very careful with radical Islamic terror. We can be politically correct and say it doesn't matter but it does matter," he said.
When asked about India and Pakistan, he said "There's a tremendous conflict between India and Pakistan. Just recently you had (the Uri attack), a lot of people killed. Hopefully everything is going to work out," he said.
Mr Trump shrugged off concerns about losing the support of some party colleagues over his remarks about women revealed in an 11-year-old tape, saying, "Some of the (Republican) leaders have (backed out) because they are not strong."
Questions on the tape and sexual assault allegations Mr Trump has faced since were not allowed by the organisers.
It's unclear whether this belated outreach will shore up Mr Trump's beleaguered campaign. A recent survey found only 7 per cent of Indian Americans supported him, nearly 10 times less than his Democratic rival.