The discussions took place during a two-day meeting of the US-India High Technology Cooperation Group, co-chaired by foreign secretary Shyam Saran and US undersecretary of commerce Kenneth I Juster, the US commerce department said.

Both Saran and Juster expressed high satisfaction with the outcome of the talks, which concluded in Washington on Friday.

The meeting "built on the progress that has been made in increasing US-India high-technology trade since the HTCG was established two years ago.

The HTCG has proven to be a very effective forum" aimed at reducing barriers to bilateral high-technology trade "while safeguarding trade in sensitive items. We look forward to further meetings of the HTCG in 2005," Juster said.

Saran pointed out the Group also covers nano-technology but it is recognised that India is at an early stage in that area and "its capabilities are still rather limited."

"We are, of course, focusing attention on how the United States would help us in terms of building up capacity in this area," said Saran. "Perhaps we could have some academic exchanges. We have also agreed there would be cooperation in

this particular sector between the US National Science Foundation and our Department of Science and Technology."

The talks included a break-out session on trade facilitation, focussing on specific, near-term steps that could be taken to reduce the tariff and non-tariff barriers to bilateral trade. Another session on strategic trade focussed on ways to enhance security of bilateral high technology trade.

The US, said Saran, has decided to have a major workshop in India on export licensing with the objective of familiarising Indian industry with the very complicated and rather extensive export licensing procedures in the US and to which Indian industry will have to conform for Indo-US trade in dual use items.

The two sides will also focus on a major event in India on biotechnology that will enable them to focus on another area of very promising cooperation.

Saran also pointed out that the Kelkar committee is currently working on how the Government-industry partnership in the defence area can be expanded.

During the HTCG meeting, the two governments reviewed further progress on a previous action for expanding high-technology trade, and developed new action items.

These new action items included continuing high-level dialogue on data privacy issues, supporting an industry-sponsored forum on India's data privacy regime,hosting export promotion events in India, exchanging information to expedite end-use visits, and organising anexport control outreach seminar in India in 2005.

The meeting of US and Indian government representatives followed the previous day's public-private forum held at the commerce department under the auspices of the HTCG.