Washington, Oct 27 (IANS): Calling the potential of India-US bilateral relationship as limitless, a top US official has suggested that as two of the world's leading democracies and most influential powers, they can help build a new international order.

"Much is possible as we deepen strategic cooperation and strengthen our economic and people-to-people ties," Deputy Secretary of State William Burns said in an address Friday to Centre for American Progress on "The United States and India: A Vital Partnership in a Changing World."

"But we have to tend carefully to our partnership," he said noting "Further progress is neither automatic nor pre-ordained."

"Keeping a partnership on track between two proud, noisy democracies takes vision and steady commitment," Burns said. "It's a little like riding a bike; either you keep peddling ahead, or you tend to fall over."

Suggesting that "there has never been a moment when India and America mattered more to one another," he said, "And there has never been a moment when partnership between us mattered more to the rest of the globe."

As two of the world's leading democracies and most influential powers, India and the US, he said, can help build a new international order.

In such an order "other democracies can flourish, human dignity is advanced, poverty is reduced, trade is expanded, our environment is preserved, violent extremism is marginalized, the spread of weapons of mass destruction is curbed, and new frontiers in science and technology are explored," Burns said.

"That is the moment, and the promise, which lies before us."

Noting that the "promise of US-Indian partnership -- is one of those rarest of Washington species, especially ten days before a Presidential election, a genuinely bipartisan policy priority," he said: "The essence of the vital partnership that we're building lies in a simple truth."

"For the first time, for both of us, our individual success at home and abroad depends significantly on our cooperation," Burns said.

Saying that progress between the two countries won't always be measured in dramatic breakthroughs, he highlighted "three important dimensions of the work -- and the promise -- that lies ahead of us: strengthening strategic cooperation; building shared prosperity; and deepening people to people ties."