Indian Home Secretary to visit Burma

Monday, 18 January 2010 18:08 Salai Pi Pi

New Delhi (Mizzima) - Indian Home Secretary Gopal K. Pillai leaves today for Burma for bilateral secretary level talks commencing on Tuesday in the Burmese capital of Naypyitaw.

G.K Pillai and his Indian delegation will hold talks with a Burmese team led by Deputy Minister for Home Affairs, Brigadier General Phone Swe.

“He will be leaving this evening. He will be there for two days,” an official from the Indian Home Ministry told Mizzima.

Though details of items to be discussed remain unknown, another official from the Joint-Secretary Office within the Indian Home Ministry said it could a continuation of previous matters discussed in secretary level talks.

The last such meeting occurred between Brigadier General Phone Swe’s delegation and then Indian Home Secretary Shri Madhukar Gupta in India’s capital of New Delhi in March, 2008.

The talks covered various issues including security, drug trafficking and border management.

Both countries agreed to strengthen cooperation in areas of security and border management along their common 1,643 km border, known as a porous international crossing and common route for the smuggling of arms, drugs and counterfeit currency.

According to the Indian Home Ministry, the Assam Rifles presently have 31 battalions deployed for counter-insurgency in India’s northeast and 15 more for guarding the Indo-Burmese border.

Recently, it was announced that the Assam Rifles are planning to increase the number of battalions deployed for border security to 26.

Moreover, Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna raised the issue of northeast Indian insurgent groups allegedly operating out of Burmese territory on the sidelines of the 12th Ministerial Meeting of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) held in Naypyitaw in December of last year.

New Delhi previously decided on the construction of a border fence in Moreh in India’s northeastern state of Manipur, which shares a border with Sagaing Division and Chin State in northwest Burma.