Washington: Without naming Pakistan, India on Wednesday said the "epicentre" of global terrorism is in its neighbourhood and asked the US to make sure that no particular extremist group is left out in the fight against terrorism.
In his opening remarks at the first-ever Indo-US strategic dialogue, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said the global nature of the security challenges that the world faces today, particularly the threat posed by transnational terrorism, requires India and the US to cooperate more closely than ever before.
"Though the epicentre of this threat lies in India's neighbourhood, it reaches far and wide all across the world as we have seen time and again and most recently a few weeks back in Times Square," Krishna said.
"Given the fact that the groups who preach the ideology of hatred and violence are increasingly coalescing, sharing resources and operating as one, it is incumbent upon all of us, to focus our efforts laser-like on every one of them," he said.
Targeting only one or other of such groups would only provide false comfort in the short term and will not usher in long term stability, Krishna said in an apparent reference to Pakistan's reluctance of Pakistan to take strong action against Lashkar-e-Taiba.
He noted the significant improvement in counter-terrorism co-operation between the US and India post-Mumbai.
"I am happy to note the tremendous progress that we have made in strengthening our counter-terrorism cooperation particularly since the Mumbai terror attack," he said.
"We value the support we have received from the US Government in our investigations. In this regard, access for our authorities to persons who have been apprehended by your Government in connection with Mumbai terror attack is the logical next step," he said referring to India's demand for access to 26/11 plotter David Headley.
"We are confident that our continued cooperation will lead to realisation of this objective," Krishna said.
The External Affairs Minister also said that conclusion of the negotiations on arrangements and procedures for reprocessing has taken the two countries closer to realizing their objective of commencing commercial collaboration in nuclear energy with US companies.
"Another key area of our bilateral dialogue is cooperation in high technology. I am glad that we are working together to pave the way for liberalising export control restrictions that apply to India.
"Given the strategic nature of our partnership and particularly the conclusion of the Civil Nuclear Initiative, these control are not only anomalous but also a hindrance to furthering trade and investment in this particularly significant sector of our economies. We look forward to early steps in this direction," he said.
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