Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram's four-day visit to the United States earlier this month helped take India-U.S. ties to a higher level in the vital areas of counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing. But it also spotlighted a few related security issues that have been left unaddressed.
Cooperation between India and the U.S. in the fields of defense and security is one of the key pillars of bilateral ties identified by the Obama administration and reinforced during U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's India visit in July. Chidambaram's visit, too, was a continuation of the same dialogue, focusing on an assessment of South Asia's security architecture and providing India with a better understanding of counterterrorism institutions in the U.S.
On that score, the minister, who asked the U.S. for "closer cooperation in matters relating to sharing of intelligence and working together to improve the skills sets of our scientists, technicians and investigators," dubbed his discussions with U.S. officials as "very fruitful."