New Delhi: India and Singapore have strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms including cross-border terrorist activities and vowed to expand bilateral cooperation to combat the menace.
The two strategic partners also stressed the need to enhance international cooperation to deal with terrorism in a comprehensive manner, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Saturday.
India and Singapore deliberated on these issues at their fourth meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) on Combating Terrorism and Transnational Crime which was held from May 18 to 19.
“As strategic partners, India and Singapore strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms including cross border terrorism and stressed the need to enhance international cooperation to combat terrorism in a comprehensive manner,” the MEA said in a statement.
It said the JWG also emphasised that all countries must take immediate and sustained action to ensure that no territory under their control is used for terrorist attacks on others and agreed on the need to expeditiously bring perpetrators of such terror attacks to justice.
The meeting was held in Singapore.
The MEA said the JWG discussed contemporary counter-terrorism challenges, including cross border movement of terrorists, countering radicalisation, combating the financing of terrorism and tackling terrorist use of the internet.
“The JWG also exchanged views on national, regional and global terrorism threat assessments, cybercrimes, drug trafficking and the nexus between transnational organised crime and terrorism,” the MEA said.
“It agreed to strengthen cooperation between Singapore and India in dealing with these challenges,” it said.
The two sides also exchanged views on deepening cooperation in multilateral fora such as the UN, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the FATF (Financial Action Task Force).
“India and Singapore are committed to further cooperation and collaboration between their respective agencies, particularly in the sphere of sharing of information and best practices, law enforcement and capacity building to counter-terrorism and transnational crimes,” the MEA said.
Mahaveer Singhvi, Joint Secretary for Counter-Terrorism at the MEA and Puah Kok Keong, Deputy Secretary (Policy) at the Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore co-chaired the meeting.
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