India is likely to sign the last foundational agreement with the U.S., Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial cooperation (BECA), at the 2+2 ministerial dialogue on Tuesday, a senior official said.
Both US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on Monday for the dialogue. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will hold bilateral talks with Mr. Esper on Monday afternoon while External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Mr. Pompeo are scheduled to hold talks in the evening at Hyderabad House. Later, Mr. Singh and Mr. Jaishankar will host a dinner for Mr. Esper and Mr. Pompeo. After the talks on Tuesday, U.S. officials will leave on a trip to Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia.
The foundational agreement BECA is set to be signed, said the source. A maritime information agreement is also under discussion between India and the US, the source stated. India already has such agreement with other Quad countries, Australia and Japan.
As reported by The Hindu last month, in the run up to the 2+2 the U.S. was keen on India signing BECA and discussions continued to iron out the differences.
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A US State department official said in Washington on Saturday that the talks will focus on four themes, regional security cooperation, defence information sharing, military-to-military interactions, and defence trade. The official said both sides have made “significant progress” towards concluding the last foundational defence enabling agreement, BECA.
“This agreement will allow for expanded geospatial information sharing between our armed forces. We are also seeking to expand secure communication capabilities between our respective militaries as well as between our foreign and defence ministries, and that too figures prominently on what we are trying to accomplish in the information-sharing space,” he stated.
Beginning 2016, India has signed three foundational agreements: the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) while the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) was signed a long time ago. An extension to the GSOMIA, the Industrial Security Annex (ISA), was signed at the last 2+2 dialogue.
Last week, India announced that Australia will join the Malabar exercise next month consisting of Japan and the U.S.. Before this, there has been a sharp increase in India’s maritime interactions with the Quad countries on a bilateral basis centered around information sharing for improved Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) in the Indian Ocean Region and Indo-Pacific.
While LEMOA has since been operationalised, COMCASA is in advanced stages of being operationalised. In increasing military to military interactions, the US has posted a liaison officer at the Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre for Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) meant to promote MDA.
On September 25, for the first time a US Navy P-8A long range Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) landed at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands for refuelling under LEMOA.
In July, frontline warships of the Indian Navy conducted a passage Exercise (PASSEX) with the US Navy’s Nimitz carrier strike group near the A&N islands as it was transiting the Indian Ocean after carrying out Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOP) in the South China Sea.