India, US working group meet on UN peacekeeping operations

A India-US joint working group has held in-depth consultations and discussed ways to improve UN peacekeeping operations, to which India is a major contributor. During the 10th meeting of the India-US Joint Working Group on UN Peacekeeping Operations here yesterday, the two countries "explored" an agreement on a set of Principles of India-US Cooperation in the Area of Training UN Peacekeepers and institutional arrangements between their peacekeeping institutions. The Indian delegation was led by Joint Secretary for United Nations Political Affairs Pavan Kapoor, while that of US was led by Assistant Secretary of State for International Organisation Affairs Esther Brimmer. At the meeting, the two countries advanced a number of goals laid out in the Declaration of Principles the Joint Working Group agreed upon in 2011. "As major contributors to UN peacekeeping operations, the US and India established the Joint Working Group on UN Peacekeeping as a means of exchanging views on policy and operations in an effort to improve UN peacekeeping operations," a State Department spokesperson told