September 27, 2003	Saturday	Rajab 29, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

SRINAGAR, Sept 26: The Indian and British armies are to hold joint military exercises early next year, a senior British army officer on a day-long visit to Indian Kashmir said on Friday.

Michael Walker, the chief of Britain’s defence staff, did not, however, divulge the venue.

“We are indeed going to do some training together,” Walker told reporters at the headquarters of the Indian army in Srinagar.

“The way the international strategic circumstances are developing these days we often find ourselves working in different parts of the world,” he said when asked the purpose of the exercises.

“We have agreed to run an exercise in February-March next year. It is a small exercise and involves some 200 people,” Walker said. “It is essentially about command and control.”

This month the armies of the US and India held joint exercises in the barren mountains of Kashmir’s northeastern Ladakh region. “The venue for the joint exercise has not been approved yet. It will be discussed in New Delhi,” army spokesman Col Mukhtair Singh told AFP.