NATO offers missile defence cooperation to India

BRUSSELS: Seeing missile attacks from rougue states as a common threat, US-led NATO military alliance has offered India cooperation and sharing of technology in the field of missile defence.

During a visit to NATO headquarters here, its top officials briefed media on its missile shield programme to defend Europe from a possible missile attack by Iran or Syria.

"You have a missile threat that confronts you. We have a missile threat that confronts us. It's a different one, but our ability to defend against it could be the same. We have cooperation on those kind of issues," said a top NATO official.

He added that NATO and India need to have the kind of dialogue that the US and India are already having as bilateral partners.

"Democracies face challenges that are common. We need to work together and resolve. We need to cooperate, because individually we cannot deal with such threats. It is better to deal with such issues commonly than deal with them individually," he said.

Talking about the commonalities between India and NATO on the missile defence project, the NATO official said, "One would be in the technology of defence".

He added, "even though the threats of missiles come from different directions, we don't necessarily see the threat that you see, because your strategic situation is different from ours. But, the technology of discovering and intercepting missiles is similar".