In no other time has India faced such multiple security challenges: Chidambaram

The government was building capacity to tackle the challenges,he said,adding,“Not a day passes when we are not adding a brick to India’s internal security capacity. But it will take time.”

Referring to a recent White House document ‘National Doctrine for Security’,he said it has identified al-Qaeda as the only enemy as far as terrorism was concerned.

“It seems the US has only one enemy as far as terrorism is concerned. The whole document is on how to defeat the al-Qaeda. That is the only challenge the US faces… But we face multiple security challenges. Within the limits of capacity,we will have to deal with all challenges,” he said.

Chidambaram said the country’s police-population ratio was among the lowest in the world — ranging from as low as 80 per 1,00,000 to the highest of 350 per 1,00,000 in Delhi. “We need to raise our police-population ratio,” he said.

In the last two-and-half years,state governments had annually recruited an average of 92,000 constables and would recruit around 1,00,000 this year,he said.

But even after recruiting nearly 3,00,000 constables,another 5,00,000 vacancies will remain.

“For reasons good or bad — mainly bad,the Centre had recruited only 36 IPS officers every year since the past four years,” he said.

This year it would recruit 220 IPS officers and the same number would have to be maintained for seven years to reach the sanctioned strength of 4,300.

“We have to expand national (intelligence grid),IB,CBI,NIA and RAW. Hopefully we will create the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC). All this will require fine leaders to be carefully chosen and trained,” he said.

Chidambaram said there were also problems of training institutes,trainers,housing,barracks and money for buying equipment and uniforms.

“In every aspect of policing,no matter how over ambitious we are in terms of recruiting officers,buying equipment,providing training institutions and trainers,there are serious limits to capacity building,” he said.

India vulnerable to terror attacks: Chidambaram

The Union Home Minister said India was vulnerable to terror attacks as it is closest to the terror epicentre.

“No country is free from terror. We are more vulnerable as we are closest to the epicentre of terror — Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Chidambaram said here.

“Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani was killed yesterday in a highly protected area of Kabul… No city is completely invulnerable,” he said.

“We try to be vigilant 24X7. We have asked the police forces to be vigilant despite all the deficiencies.

“Capacity is not sufficient to preempt possible attacks,for which intelligence gathering,investigation and a counter-terrorism agency backed by advanced technical network to bringing in all the data will have to be in place,” he said adding the Centre would build National Counter Terrorism Centre soon.

Giving statistics of terror attacks in the country,he said it started since 1998 and 17 major incidents took place between 1998-2003.

The worst period was 2005 to 2008 when 29 major terrorist attacks occurred,including 26/11.

We can choose friends,but not neighbours: HM

India is in a troubled geographical location,Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said today and stressed on the need for improving relations with neighbouring countries.

“We can choose our friends,but not our neighbours. We can make history but cannot unmake geography. Therefore,we need to build on what we have,” he said at the Bharat Chamber of Commerce.

“We have to build on good relations that we are able to forge (with neighbours) and need to work hard to improve relations in conditions which are not as good as we want them to be,” he said.

Referring to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Bangladesh,he said it was a major effort to build relations with the country that was helped to find its feet in 1971.

It was in India’s national interest that it helped Bangladesh become a strong and prosperous country. “We cannot build a Berlin Wall between India and Bangladesh. We must build relations and help them build capacity. The starting point to this exercises is to find solutions to some long-festering issues.”

Maintaining that some problems like the Tinbigha corridor should have been resolved long ago,he said: “We had made up our mind that we would solve this problem. It was resolved in a few minutes. We said use the corridor 24 hours a day instead of 12 hours a day.”

The Tinbigha problem was solved in a spirit of ‘give and take,’ and “we haven’t given or taken much. It required a certain amount of statesmanship to give a little and take a

little,” Chidambaram said.

The problems of enclaves,land in adverse positions and undemarcated boundaries would also have to be solved in the spirit of give and take.

It took 51 years to solve the problem of undemarcated boundaries with Bangladesh,including Tinbigha. “With a little give and take,we have been able to find solutions to these problems and I compliment all chief ministers of bordering states for standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the government of India in resolving the issues.”

Although the Teesta water-sharing and the issue of access to India from Bangladesh remain,“I am confident that given time,patience and some degree of statesmanship,these two problems will be solved.

“Never before in the last 40 years have we had a moment in our history where we can say with a degree of assurance that India and Bangladesh were poised to forge a very close relationship for mutual benefit,” he said.

India should seize the moment to forge a strong relation with Bangladesh. “Just as it has done with Bhutan and Sri Lanka before the beginning of the ethnic conflict and hopes to do with Nepal,” he added.