Netanyahu hails Modi as a "great leader", backs surgical strike against Pak

New Delhi, Jan 15 : The visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi as a "great leader" and of course in a veiled manner endorsed India's surgical strike against Pakistan but said, he would let India make its "own choices".

"I will let India make its own choices," Mr Netanyahu told 'India Today' TV in an interview on Sunday evening.

But he hastened to add in the same breadth that there are only two ways of dealing with terrorism, "you preempt it" by intelligence and secondly - "take action against the killers".

However, to a repeated question on whether backed the surgical strike, the Israel Prime Minister skirted a direct reply and said, "I am trying to be a foreign minister and a diplomat".

He said Mr Modi has been "a great leader" and also that Indian Prime Minister is being "impatient to bring future to his people".

To a question, he said, "You fight terrorism by fighting it".

The Israeli Prime Minister, who is the second Prime Minister from his country after Ariel Sharon to visit India in 2003, said, India-Israel relationship was like a "marriage made in heaven" and that one vote by India against Israel will not affect the ties.

However, he said Israel was "disappointed" with India's vote against it on Jerusalem in the United Nations but insisted that: ".... this visit (Natanyahu in Delhi) is a testimony that our relationship is moving on so many fronts forward".

"I don't think one vote affects a general trend you can see in many other votes and these visits," he said.