A high-powered delegation led by K C Singh, the additional secretary for International Organizations at the External Affairs ministry and till recently India's Ambassador to Tehran, began talks with their United States counterparts as part of the Joint Working Group on Terrorism.
The delegation also comprised of senior officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Intelligence Bureau.
Administration and diplomatic sources told rediff.com that the meetings would include the sharing of notes and intelligence on continuing to map out an effective modus operandi on combating international terrorism, and also discuss recent attacks in New Delhi in the Jama Masjid and Srinagar, which the US intelligence is convinced is the work of al Qaeda through its proxies, both within India and those coming across the border from Pakistan.
The US team is led by State Department's Coordinator for Counter Terrorism, Ambassador-at-Large Henry A Crumpton.
Sources said that much of the discussion would also focus on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the continuing terrorism in Iraq, while the Indian team would take up cross-border terrorism and the issue of Pakistan not completely dismantling terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir as well as those within that country.
The Joint Working Group on Terrorism meeting, the officials explained, were part of an ongoing series of discussions and strategy conferences between Indian and US anti-terrorism and intelligence groups that pre-date 9/11, which, of course, had attained special and greater significance since 9/11.
"It is an annual meeting where we share notes, strategies, intelligence," one source said, "with the whole gamut of agencies that are in the frontlines of fighting both domestic and international terrorism, involved in these intense discussions."
After the annual meeting of the Joint Working Group on Terrorism concludes, Singh on April 20 is slated to meet counter-terrorism experts outside the government and various think tanks.
Meanwhile, officials from the CBI and IB would continue to have bilateral meetings with their counterparts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, and other intelligence officials.
Singh is also scheduled to visit the National Counter-terrorism Center in Virginia to see some of the latest in sophisticated technology and other intelligence gathering methods, which could be replicated in India to thwart the growing international terrorism.
The sources asserted that counter-terrorism remained the number one priority for both the US and India, and noted that it was highlighted in the July 18 joint US-India statement issued by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the latter's visit to Washington, and reaffirmed during President Bush's visit to India in March.
