By IANS,
New Delhi: India and the US launched their first internal security dialogue here Friday with Home Minister P. Chidambaram and his American counterpart Janet Napolitano deliberating stepped up counter-terror cooperation, an official said.
Chidambaram leads the Indian delegation. The US team is headed by Secretary of Homeland Napolitano, who arrived in India Tuesday. Napolitano is the first top official from the US to visit India after President Barack Obama’s in November last year
Chidambaram and Napolitano will later hold a joint press briefing Friday evening.
As the talks coincide with the ongoing trial in Chicago of the 2008 terror strike accused Tahawwur Rana, the two sides are likely to discuss capacity building and mutual assistance in investigations, including in the Mumbai massacre, the official said.
In the Chicago trial, Pakistani-born American terrorist David Coleman Headley has linked Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group that planned and executed the attack which left 166 people, including six Americans, dead.
Other issues likely to come up during the day-long talks include cooperation in coastal security, mega city policing, countering illicit financing and trans-national crime, cyber security, accessing and sharing of data relating to terrorism, transfer of counter-terrorism and homeland security equipment to each other.