Washington: India and the United States signed a wide-ranging science and technology agreement here today.
The agreement, which was signed by of Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during his ongoing visit is a part of continuing efforts to strengthen ties between India and the US.
The agreement aims at expanding collaboration in basic sciences, space, energy, nanotechnology, health and information technology.
Sibal said the scientific community's contribution in the fields of nano-tech and bio-tech will be particularly important.
"This historic agreement will take the relationship of India and the United States to a new level," Sibal said, adding he was confident it would also lead to "collaboration far more diverse and deep and far more interactive."
Speaking on Intellectual Property protection, he said that it will be a shared responsibility with equitable contribution by both sides. " In any joint programme, IPR will
be shared," he said.
The new agreement for the first time establishes intellectual property right protocols and other provisions necessary to conduct active collaborative research.
Pointing to areas of collaboration, Sibal said it was important that both countries work together in the area of life sciences, especially in diseases afflicting the poor, and
in curing diseases associated with natural calamities.
An Indo-US science and technology agreement was first mooted in 1993, but it ran into trouble over differences relating to intellectual property rights provisions.
Then in 1997, the Indo-US S&T Forum was proposed, but even as the terms of the mechanism were being negotiated, the Pokharan nuclear tests, pushing all talk of Indo-US scientific cooperation into cold storage overtook the efforts.
Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, the sources said would help facilitate and promote the interaction, of government, academia, and industry in science, technology and other related areas.
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