India, US agree to share information on terror suspects
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States, the two countries on Wednesday signed a key agreement to exchange information on terror suspects.
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States, the two countries on Wednesday signed a key agreement to exchange information on terror suspects. The agreement lays emphasis on prompt sharing of data regarding terrorists, including their biographic information.
Sources said though India and US agencies have been working in close co-ordination with this agreement the process of sharing terror related information has been formalised. Both countries will appoint nodal officers in key intelligence agencies for exchanging information and further enhance counter terrorism co-operation.
The agreement was signed by Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and US ambassador to India Richard Verma.
With signing of this key pact, India has formally entered into the US Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), which will enable it to access “unclassified biographic information of known and suspected terrorists” maintained by the US on a reciprocal basis. The HSPD-6 is a model text agreement for exchange of terrorist screening information between Terrorist Screening Centre (TSC) of the US and an Indian agency.
Officials from both countries had several rounds of meeting over the past one year and have resolved most of the differences which helped them reach the agreement.
At present, US has a similar agreement with 30 countries. The TSC is a multi agency organisation which is administered by FBI and it consolidates several terrorist watch lists maintained by different US government agencies into single terrorist database on terror suspects.
This terror database has information regarding the name of the terror suspect, nationality, date of birth, photos, finger prints and passport number. ''Initially we felt that the American agencies may not be very keen to provide crucial information to us but these issues have been discussed in detail and sorted out. In all probability the Intelligence Bureau will be the nodal agency to deal with the TSC,’’a senior intelligence official said.
Senior Home Ministry officials also reiterated that precautions have been taken in the agreement that privacy of nationals of both countries is not violated.