India has a joint working group with Russia on counter-terrorism, and the two countries have worked on common objectives in Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a senior MEA official said here. Sanjay Verma, Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs, stated that the two countries collaborate on counterterrorism and exchange notes.
“There are several tracks on which we do that. We have a joint working group with Russia on counterterrorism. That is definitely an area where we can collaborate. We exchange notes etc. Also in the FATF format till Russia was a member, now that membership is suspended or limited to a large extent, in the FATF process also we worked with Russia on common objectives,” he said.
He was responding to a query during a joint press conference on the third ‘No Money for Terror’ (NMFT) Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing, which will begin here on Friday. Director General of the NIA, Dinkar Gupta, said that several countries are participating in the ministerial conference. Answering a query, he said Pakistan and Afghanistan are not participating in the conference. “Seventy eight countries and multilateral organisations are participating in the third edition of the “No Money for Terror” Conference being organised in the national capital on November 18-19,” he said.
Responding to queries, Sanjay Verma said that China has been invited to the conference, but its participation has not been confirmed.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver the inaugural address at the Ministerial Conference.
The conference will offer a platform for participating nations and organisations to deliberate on the effectiveness of the current international regime on counter-terrorism financing as well as the steps required to address emerging challenges. The conference will build on the gains and learnings of the previous two conferences held in Paris in April 2018 and in Melbourne in November 2019 and will work towards enhancing global cooperation to deny finances to terrorists and access to permissive jurisdictions to operate.
India was to host the third conference, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference will be attended by about 450 delegates from across the world, including Ministers, Heads of Multilateral organisations and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Heads of Delegations.
This will be the second major international conference on terrorism to be hosted by India. The United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee meeting was held in India last month. It was the first time that such a meeting was held outside New York.