Washington, Jan 20: Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, is one of the five world leaders whom US president Barack Obama considers to be his nearest and dearest pals on the global stage.

Other leaders whom Obama counts as friends include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“I mean, I think that if you ask them, [they] would say, we have a lot of trust and confidence in the President. We believe what he says. We believe that he’ll follow through on his commitments. We think he’s paying attention to our concerns and our interests,” the Global Post quoted Obama as telling Time Magazine’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview.

“And that’s part of the reason why we’ve been able to forge these close working relationships and gotten a whole bunch of stuff done,” he said.

Obama also revealed that he admires the foreign policy of his predecessor, George W Bush.

“I continue to believe that he managed a very difficult period very effectively,” said Obama