India & EU in counter-terrorism talks

I / New Delhi October 13, 2009, 12:47 IST

In the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, the 27-nation European Union is keen on substantially raising its cooperation with India in counter-terrorism and the two sides are exploring the possibility of signing a mutual legal assistance treaty.

India and the EU are also looking at the possibility of an agreement between CBI and its European counterpart Europol for effective coordination between the two agencies in checking crime.

EU's Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, who was here to "hear the lessons learnt" from 26/11, discussed the issues of security cooperation with National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, Home Secretary G K Pillai and chiefs of CBI, Intelligence Bureau and RAW here.    

"We really want to explore what we can do more together, learn from each other... We need to work on several fronts," he told PTI in an interview here. He identified the possible areas of cooperation as intelligence sharing, research and development of skills of counter-terror security forces.    

"There are several ideas in the field of security," the top EU official said, adding one of those was an agreement like Mutual Legal Assistance which could be explored.

Talking about EU's keenness to boost cooperation in security and counter-terrorism, Kerchove said India is "one of the most important countries for us because we are faced with global terrorist threats and India has been victim of terrorism like some of EU states."    

EU also wants to learn from India about how to curb financing of terrorists considering its experience in working against Hawala channels.    

"India has deep knowledge of some mechanics like hawala where we can learn from Indian experience," the EU Counter-Terrorism chief said.    

"It was agreed sometime ago that Europol will have a cooperation agreement with CBI... We want to have quickly an agreement. It has been too long," he said, promising to do his "best to speed up this".    

Pointing out that India was in the process of setting up National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Kerchove said European nations, like Britain, France, Germany and Spain have already developed such fusion centres and New Delhi could check out which model fits its specificity.    

He also talked about the need for collaboration in the field of security-related research.    

"In Europe, we are investing more and more money to develop security-related research. There are issues like detection at ports and airports, how to intercept communication on internet of communication," he said.

The EU official said information flow was already happening and because of this a number of terror attacks were foiled in India. He, however, did not give details.    

Kerchove also talked about the possibility of EU member states training police forces of Indian states and said he had discussed this issue with Indian officials.    

"Not all the Indian states are at the same level of expertise. Why can't there be concrete cooperation between EU states and Indian states? We need to explore," he said.    

"We are doing a lot but we need to do more," Kerchove said.