By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : India and the US Monday began four days of high-level talks here focusing on expansion of defence cooperation, including in production and procurement of arms and equipment.
The Indian delegation is led by Defence Secretary Vijay Singh while the US team is headed Eric Edelman, under secretary of defence for policy.
The two sides are likely to look at increasing the transfers of military equipment and technology. The US is ready to renew the supply of all the items in the pipeline when sanctions were imposed after 1998 nuclear tests.
The talks opened with a two-day session of the Defence Production and Procurement Group (DPPG) with the Director General of Acquisitions S.K. Sharma leading the Indian side.
This is the eighth meeting of the Defence Policy Group (DPG), which continues to be the primary mechanism to guide the India-US defence relationship. It held its seventh meeting Nov 21-23 last year.
This will be followed by a second two-day session of the Defence Policy Group (DPG) starting Wednesday where Singh and Edelman will lead the discussions.
The DPG included an intensive exchange of views on the international strategic and security situation and on the further development of bilateral defence cooperation as envisaged under the June 28, 2005 Defence Framework set in place by the then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and former US Secretary for Defence Ronald Rumsfeld.
The DPG also reviewed the reports of the four sub-groups – Military Cooperation Group, Joint Technology Group, Senior Security Technology Group and Senior Technology Security Group and the Defence Procurement & Production Group (DPPG).