India and Australia on Monday inked treaties on extradition and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters as they vowed to enhance their strategic security and counter-terrorism cooperation.
"Australia wants to take the relationship with India to the front ranks of the partnerships we have," Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said at a joint press briefing with visiting External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee after the agreements were signed in Canberra.
"These are a couple of practical illustrations of how we want our strategic security, defence and counter-terrorism arrangements to be enhanced," he said.
The two countries agreed to further strengthen their relationship by forming a new body to hold yearly talks and by signing treaties to increase anti-terror efforts.
The Australia-India Roundtable will be held by the Lowy Institute and the Indian Council for World Affairs. Australia also announced that it would spend 10 million Australian dollars to fund discussions on public policy issues such as agriculture, climate change and resource management.
Reviving the bilateral dialogue framework after a gap of three years, the ministers had in-depth and wide-ranging discussions on international and regional issues, including food security and energy security challenges and decided to work together at ministerial level.
They also deliberated on bilateral economic potential, education, security and counter-terrorism measures.
Mukherjee said the two countries looked forward to increasing operation in areas such as energy, information technology and biotechnology.
The two sides also decided to hold regular talks between their chiefs of defence, which will be held in Australia soon. Smith is likely to visit India in September.
The foreign minister said Australia recognised India as an important country and wants to have good bilateral relations with India and China.
"It was important for all the major powers -- Japan, India and China -- to have constructive relations between themselves as well. Its not zero sum game but win-win for all the nations," he said.
If Australia has good relations with India and was keen to take the ties to a new level, it does not mean that will be at the expense of any other nation, he said.
The two countries also noted that the proposal to create an Australia-India CEOs' forum will ensure that the expanding economic relationship was underpinned by closer business links at higher level.
They reiterated that the two sides were looking forward to receive a feasibility report for a comprehensive free trade agreement from the joint FTA study group by end of this year.
