NEW DELHI, Feb 9: Senior members of the intelligence and diplomatic fraternity of India, Israel and the United States have come together to form a “trilateral mechanism” to tackle international terrorism, Indian news reports said on Sunday, quoting from the deliberations of a low-profile conference in New Delhi last week.

The reports said the officials from the three countries have “constituted themselves into a ginger group to push their governments to unite in a common front to combat international terrorism.” During the close-door dialogue it was pointed out that the three countries have been at the receiving end of terrorism for several years and as “sister-democracies” they must unite to combat this menace, a report on the Rediff web- based newsgroup said.

The two-day conference was organised by India’s Manipal Academy of Higher Education in association with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Washington DC.

Prominent among them were Shabtai Savit, former director- general of the Mossad; Major General (retired) Uzi Dayan, former director-general of the Israeli Military Intelligence; former US national security advisor Steve Pomerantz; A.K.Verma, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency; B.Raman, India’s anti-terrorism expert and former senior intelligence officer; K.P.S. Gill, former director-general of Punjab police; Harvey J. Feldmann, former US ambassador to the UN and G. Parthasarathy, former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan.

The experts believed the three countries could set up a trilateral mechanism for counter-terrorism and if it works satisfactorily they could associate other like-minded democracies with it.

A permanent non-governmental body of professional experts would be formed to promote this objective, the reports said.—Jawed Naqvi