India UK strengthen bonds to fight cross border terrorism
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New Delhi, Jan 27: India and the UK recently held the 14th meeting of the India UK Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism. The meeting was held virtually on Jan 21 and 22. Both the nations strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Both India and UK emphasized on the demand of strengthening the international cooperation so that they could combat the global problem of terrorism completely besides combating the cross-border terrorism in South Asia.
The countries reviewed the threats by the United Nations prescribed terrorist entities and terrorists. Both the countries also exchanged their views on the assessment of the terrorist entities and individuals as a tool to counter the terrorism. They also exchanged the ideas in order to further strengthen the bilateral cooperation to combat the terrorism, extremism & radicalization, financing of terrorism, preventing the internet exploitation for terrorism, information sharing, cooperation between law enforcement, capacity building, and maritime and aviation security. Further, the challenges faced to counter the terrorism in the COVID 19 pandemic situation were also discussed.
The meeting concluded by both the countries asking the other nations to take an immediate step in order to ensure that no territory under their control has been used for terrorist activities. They also reaffirmed that if any attack executes from a particular territory, the respective nation must take actions against it. The delegations from both sides were led by Mahaveer Singhvi, Joint Secretary for Counter-Terrorism in Ministry of External Affairs of India, and Tom Hurd, Director-General, Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism, UK government.
International cooperation is essential to #CounterTerrorism. Co-chaired the 14th meeting of #India-#UK #JointWorkingGroup on #CT with Mr Tom Hurd , DG, Office of Security and CT of the UK. @HCI_London @UKinIndia @harshvshringla @DrSJaishankar @VikasSwarup @vkumar1969 pic.twitter.com/jWjx56pnxm
— Mahaveer Singhvi IFS (@MahavirSinghvii) January 23, 2021
India and UK have showed and shared a strong interest in preventing terror attacks on their mainland. UK has suffered terrorist attack on British soil in London on July 7, 2005 and India has recently through the Mumbai attack on Nov 26-28, 2008. In the line, Prime Minister Modi, during his visit to the UK in Nov 2015, explicitly blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai attack. In the 13th meeting of the India-UK Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism, in London on Nov 25-26 2019, both the countries had committed to work together to counter the terrorism in all its forms.