WASHINGTON, May 21 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Wednesday welcomed more engagement between India and Pakistan, as the two rivals show goodwill to each other before India's upcoming inauguration of a new prime minister.

State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki was responding to India's invitation to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and leaders of other South Asian nations for the swearing-in ceremony of incoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi slated for Monday.

Sharif has invited Modi for a visit to his country.

"We welcome increased engagement between India and Pakistan, and their leaders and ... India's engagement with its neighbors, leading up to the inauguration," Psaki told reporters at a daily news briefing.

"We believe increased engagement between India and Pakistan is a positive step, so we'll see what happens," she added.

Since their independence from British rule in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir.

Psaki said the U.S. would not attend Modi's inauguration.

"We don't have any plans to send our representatives from the United States," she said. "It's standard for events and inaugurations in India, so it should come as no surprise."

U.S. denied Modi, then the chief minister of India's western state of Gujarat, a visa in 2005 for his alleged role in the communal riots in the state three years earlier, in which over 1, 000 people, mostly minority Muslims, were killed.

Bilateral ties were strained after the U.S. arrest of India's deputy consul general in New York in December last year over visa fraud charges escalated into a major diplomatic row.