India, Oz sign pacts on extradition, mutual legal assistance

India and Australia today inked treaties on extradition and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters as they vowed to enhance their strategic security and counter-terrorism cooperation. "Australia wants to take the relationship with India to the front ranks of the partnerships we have," Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said at a joint press briefing with visiting External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee after the agreements were signed here. "These are a couple of practical illustrations of how we want our strategic security, defence and counter-terrorism arrangements to be enhanced," he said. The two countries agreed to further strengthen their relationship by forming a new body to hold yearly talks and by signing treaties to increase anti-terror efforts. The Australia-India Roundtable will be held by the Lowy Institute and the Indian Council for World Affairs. Australia also announced that it would spend 10 million Australian dollars to fund discussions on public policy issues such as agriculture, climate change and resource management. Reviving the bilateral dialogue framework after a gap of three years, the ministers had in-depth and wide-ranging discussions on international and regional issues, including food security and energy security challenges and decided to work together at ministerial level. They also deliberated on bilateral economic potential, education, security and counter-terrorism measures. Mukherjee said the two countries looked forward to increasing operation in areas such as energy, information technology and biotechnology. By Ms.Bobby Aanand, Metropolitan Jury.

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