India to strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation

London [United Kingdom], April 18 (ANI): Reiterating their strong condemnation of terrorism and terror-related incidents, both India and the United Kingdom (UK) on Wednesday agreed to strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart Theresa May agreed to strengthen cooperation to take decisive actions against globally-proscribed terrorists and terror entities to protect citizens, including Lashkar-e-Tayibba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network, Al Qaeda, Islamic State (IS) and their affiliates.

Both the leaders also affirmed that terrorism cannot be justified on any grounds whatsoever it may be and it should not be associated with any religion, creed, nationality and ethnicity.

Both the leaders agreed that terrorist and extremist organisations need to be denied space to radicalise, recruit and conduct attacks on innocent people; for this all countries need to work together to disrupt terrorist networks, their financing and movement of terrorists, including foreign terrorist fighters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British Prime Minister Theresa May have reiterated their shared interest in strengthening the disarmament and non-proliferation regimes against the spread and use of chemical weapons in the wake of the appalling nerve agent attack on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury.

"They shared their deepest concern about the continued reports of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic. They oppose the use of chemical weapons anywhere, at any time, by anybody, under any circumstances and are committed to strengthening the effective implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention," the joint-statement, shared by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.

"They emphasised the need for urgent investigations and underline that the conduct of all investigations of any use of chemical weapons must be strictly in accordance with the provisions of the Convention," the statement added.

Prime Minister Modi, who is on a five-day tour to three nations, arrived at the Heathrow airport of the United Kingdom on Tuesday to take part in the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.(ANI)