NEW DELHI, Dec 4 � Top security experts of India and the US today met here to discuss various measures, including exchange of technologies, to help each other face challenges like terrorism, cyber crime and ensuring safety of major cities, reports PTI.
The conference of police chiefs from India and the US, which began here today, saw the security czars stressing the needs to develop global linkages for evolving effective policing to address security threats, such as terrorism, drugs traffickings and transnational crime.
�This conference is a key element in the expansion of our bilateral cooperation with the United States, aimed at securing our nations. As strategic partners, the more we can work with each other to enhance internal security, the more meaningful our partnership becomes to the ordinary citizen,� Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said while inaugurating the two-day meeting.
Referring to the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and the 26/11 Mumbai strike, the Home Minister said major terrorist attacks typically target large and densely populated urban areas, intentionally trying to inflict maximum damage.
Shinde said an efficient megacity policing system must serve as an effective deterrent against terrorists and their masters, who launch targeted attacks on the nerve centres of a country and therefore cooperation in megacity policing is intended to help each other enhance capacity, and to learn from each other, to provide an integrated security umbrella.
Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami said both sides will discuss all relevant issues relating to detection of terrorist activities, their prevention and protection of material resources and human lives in terror attacks. �We have enormous challenges � conventional as well as modern. To surmount them, we have to forge partnership with like thinking nations who have an identical resolve to fight terrorism, strengthen peace and democracy and thereby development,� he said.
Assistant Secretary in the US Department of Homeland Security David Heyman said this was for the first time the frontline operators and first protectors gathered to discuss mutual cooperation.
�We gathered to exchange information on homeland security, to share best practices, lessons learnt from each other from respective domestic security experiences. We hope to hear from police chiefs of major US cities their experiences, major companies how their technologies upgraded the US training capabilities, how they can help our partners here in India,� he said.