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As part of this year’s US-India Global issues forum, the two countries have held discussions to review the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The meeting was co-chaired by Maria Otero, US under secretary for democracy and Nirupama Rao, Indian Foreign Secretary on Thursday.
“We spoke about improving the UNHRC,” Maria Otero said. She pointed out that the UNHRC was up for its five-year review in 2011. “This is part of that process,” she said, adding that it indicated President Barack Obama’s signal of involvement with the United Nations.
During the forum, both countries held wide-ranging discussions in areas ranging from pandemic influenza, disaster management to climate change, which could lead to bilateral documents to be unveiled during the state visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington this month.
“We were mainly looking at the disaster management organisation here and finding ways to collaborate with US agencies like Federal Emergency Management Agency and Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance,” she said.
Otero said another area was to help supporting “India in its leadership role in the region to share its knowledge through SAARC”.
