India, Russia to cooperate in disaster management

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, OCT. 20. India and Russia will cooperate in prevention, monitoring and management of natural and man-made disasters, which acquire special significance in the light of the growing terrorist threat in the world.

A memorandum of understanding on the subject will be signed during the coming visit of the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B. Vajpayee, to Moscow next month. This was revealed by the Minister for Human Resources and Development, Science and Technology, and Ocean Development, Dr. M.M. Joshi, who is here to receive an honorary fellowship in the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and Knighthood of Sciences and Arts. He is the first Indian to have been conferred the award.

India, which is planning to set up a disaster management mechanism, will draw on the experience of Russia's Ministry for Emergency Situations, regarded as one of the most efficient setups in the world, Dr. Joshi said.

During Mr. Vajpayee's visit, India and Russia will sign an accord on intellectual property rights (IPR) to clear the way for wide- ranging exchange of technologies between the countries.

The IPR accord will remove legal impediments to the transfer of technology between India and Russia. The two sides have already approved the establishment of a joint centre for technology transfer, whose job will be to identify promising technologies and help commercialise them, he said. Plans are also afoot to set up an Indo-Russian biotechnology centre in India to coordinate joint research into new vaccines, diagnostics and transgenic technologies.

India and Russia will shortly supply additional hardware for the Russian-Indian Centre for Advanced Computing Research opened in Moscow last year, to double its computing capacity to 36 gigaflops.

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Section  : International
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