New Delhi, Oct 27 (UNI) With India and United States signing Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) for geo-spatial cooperation, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday described it as 'significant move.'
The pact would allow both countries to share sensitive information regarding satellite and sensor data.
The crucial defence pact was signed after discussions between Mr Singh and and his visiting US counterpart Mark T Esper.
“During the meeting today, we have had comprehensive discussions on key aspects of our bilateral and multilateral cooperation. We considered the major challenges we face,” he said during issuing of the joint statement after signing of the pact.
“We continued our discussions on larger regional and global perspective today over the 2+2 dialogue,” he added.
Signing of BECA today after inking pact of LEMOA in 2016 and COMCASA in 2018 is a significant achievement in that direction, the minister said.
“We also agreed that upholding rules-based international order respecting rule of law and freedom of navigation in the international sea and uploading territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states are essential,” Mr Singh also said.
“I would also like to highlight some of the other noteworthy steps taken by both India and US in follow up to our earlier discussions. These include Positioning a USN LO at IFC-IOR and Indian LO at NAVCENT, Bahrain; greater interaction and coordination with CENTCOM and AFRICOM; setting up of the COMSEC account and increasing the scope and complexities of our exercises. Now LO's at each other's establishments could be leveraged to enhance our information sharing architecture. To sum it up, our military to military cooperation is progressing well,” he said.
US secretary of state Michael Pompeo mentioned the killing of 20 Indian Army personnel in Galwan Valley after a clash with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China and said his country stands with India to deal with any threat.
“The US and India are better aligned to protect our democracies and shared values,” Mr Pompeo also said during the joint statement.
“Our leaders and citizens see with increasing clarity that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is no friend to democracy, rule of law and transparency,” Mr Pompeo said, taking shots at China. “I am glad to say India and US are taking all steps to strengthen cooperation against all threats and not just those posed by CCP,” he added.
BECA is considered the last of the foundational agreements between India and the US.
The agreement was proposed between the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency of the US department of defence and the defence ministry and allows India and the US to share military information which includes maps, nautical and aeronautical charts, commercial and other unclassified imagery, geodetic, geophysical, geomagnetic and gravity data.
Most of the information that will be shared under the agreement will be that of the unclassified category but there is a provision of sharing classified information as well.
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