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US, India working to expand defence ties

REUTERS, Washington
US and Indian defence officials hope to accelerate efforts to expand bilateral ties and pave the way to more arms sales at meetings in Washington next week, a top Pentagon official said on Monday.
Defence Undersecretary Douglas Feith, leading the US delegation, said the United States and India already had signed an agreement on securing shared defence information, and were cooperating on naval operations.
In addition, India agreed last month to buy eight Raytheon Co. long-range weapon-locating radars in the first major US-Indian weapons deal in more than a decade, Feith said.
Feith told Indian and US business executives that a dozen subgroups also were focused on issues from counter-terrorism to coopera-
tive sales and marketing after a first meeting of the US-Indian Defence Planning Group last December.
He said he hoped the group's second set of meetings -- scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday -would cement closer ties between the two nations in a security environment reshaped by the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"We hope to accelerate our work across the board," Feith told a conference on US-Indian defence trade.
"We have a whole set of items on the agenda, from military to military relations ... joint exercises, defence trade cooperation, general strategic discussions on the region and Asia broadly," Feith told Reuters after the conference.
Feith spoke on the eve of a trip to the region by Christine Rocca, assistant US secretary of state for
South Asian affairs, signaling growing US concern over tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
He underscored the Bush administration's commitment to improving strategic relations with both South Asia nuclear powers, but said Washington wanted to deal with India in its own right, not solely on the basis of the regional conflict.
Both countries have been seen as critical allies in the US war against terrorism.
"It is clear that in the past year, the United States and India have been moving together in the right direction," Feith said. "The United States recognises an interest in looking positively on a much-wider range of activities with India, including the area of defence trade and technology cooperation."