The National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) will host a two-day meeting of five national security advisers (NSAs) of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in the national capital on September 15-16 as part of India’s Brics outreach plan with the eighth Brics summit of the leaders being scheduled for October 15-16 in Goa.
The NSA meeting is being seen as crucial, particularly for neighbouring giants India and China, in the light of increasing security concerns with both countries battling elements of violent Islamic radicalism. While India continues to combat Islamic radical outfits like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), ISIS, and a host of other smaller outfits, China continues to battle Uighur Islamic militants in its Xinjiang province.
Often seen as China’s internal security matter, many experts link the Uighur issue with that of global jihad as practised by the ISIS. Reports speak of hundreds of Chinese citizens currently fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
“With jihadi terror elements already operating in India and Bangladesh having faced a horrific attack on July 1, it will quite likely form an important agenda in the NSA level meet. There may be developments relating to efforts to set up a universal counter terrorism front without any pre-conditions to effectively fight the scourge posed by terrorists, something that Brics leaders had recently proposed,” official sources familiar with the development told this newspaper.
Complementing the effort of the NSAs will be the meeting between the Brics working groups on counter-terrorism which will also meet in September with the exact date and venue yet to be decided, the sources said.
Brics is a group of the world’s emerging nations and represents more than 42 per cent of the world population.
India, which has assumed the chairmanship of Brics in February, has organised a massive outreach plan with 95 meetings slated till December 2016 between ministers, top officials, working groups and at technical levels spanning the intervening months.
“Many meetings and events have been planned outside the national capital in different cities and states in order to expand the Brics catchment across the country and to disseminate the Brics brand among the people,” the sources added.
This year, India has invited BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) leaders from Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal as special invitees to the Eighth Summit and for the Brics-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit in Goa.
The Brics-BIMSTEC outreach event will seek to project and demonstrate India’s leadership role among the countries.
