For the first time since 2003, the liberalist curtain blocking Narendra Modi from Western democracies has parted slightly — offering him an invitation to attend a London business summit, and revealing a window that opens into America.

Modi has been invited to address India Summit 2009, organised by Dow Jones and Financial News. The newspaper’s promotional email introduces Modi as the leading speaker at the summit.

Officials in the chief minister’s office confirmed the receipt of the invitation, but did not comment on Modi’s response to it.

But Modi’s NRG followers are certain that the invitation from London will help Modi end America’s diplomatic embargo. A UK-based NRG lobbyist said, “Modi has his foot on the door.

In London, he only needs to push it gently.” The lobbyist said that there were anti-Modi protests in the UK in 2003, but asserted that he never discerned such antipathy towards the CM in the rest of the European Union.

An Ahmedabad-based political analyst claimed that chief minister’s UK trip would galvanise the NRG lobbyists in the US. “Moreover, it is a known fact that foreign policies of the EU and the US are pretty much interlinked,” he said.