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President Obama is preparing for his first state dinner at the White House, given in honour of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur.

The guest list and the menu are top secret until tonight but the chef-of-honour is a naturalised American born in Ethiopia and brought up in Sweden, who is a .

At the weekend I heard him on the radio talking about Thanksgiving as a celebration of America's strength as a country of immigrants, and giving a recipe for collard greens and bok choy in coconut sauce which might go down well with the vegetarian prime minister.

The black-tie dinner is the hottest ticket in town and the Washington Post has already reported on the of previous such events, suggesting to potential guests that formal elegance is better than anything eye-catching.

I am sure the president's attire will be as sober as possible, but the move is politically bold, when America wants to be good friends with both Pakistan and India. It has obvious pitfalls on the brink of an announcement of strategy in Afghanistan.

India has made and this traditionally worries Pakistan. It has been put forward as a strategic reason why some in Pakistan's intelligence service support the Taliban, as a if and when the Americans leave.

The US envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, told a news conference yesterday that the Pakistanis shouldn't read anything into the honour. He said that although it is typically a European leader who gets the first such invitation, "someone has to get the first trip" and Mr Obama decided it should be India. But it should not be read as a diminution of the relationship with Pakistan, he said.

But it is pretty obvious relations with Pakistan will in the less formal part of the visit. If that makes Pakistan nervous, perhaps that is the intention.

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