India & New Zealand To Focus On Maritime Security, Joint Naval Training & Exercises Under Defence Strategic Dialogue

India and New Zealand are taking considerable steps to strengthen their bilateral defence and security ties, after the end of the 2nd India-New Zealand Defence Strategic Dialogue in Wellington.

The high-level talks were co-chaired by India’s Joint Secretary Amitabh Prasad from the Ministry of Defence and his counterpart, Deputy Secretary Richard Schmidt.

The discussions focused on joint training of both countries’ armed forces, formulating a strategy for ensuring maritime security and also coordinating in the Indo-Pacific to uphold the interests of both nations.

The talks were a follow-up to implement the India-New Zealand Strategic Partnership Roadmap 2030, established when Indian PM Narendra Modi visited New Zealand and met Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

An important pillar of this roadmap, which focuses on 6 domains, is defence and security cooperation.

In order to translate the bilateral goals into reality, both countries have decided to formulate specific actionable plans across land, sea and air domains through different initiatives.

These include joint exercises between the countries’ armed forces, regular visits and exchanges between personnel, joint training programs and arranging defence staff meetings of both countries to discuss the most pressing issues so they can be resolved quickly with mutual understanding and furthering defence discussions to ministerial-level reviews.

Apart from traditional military engagements, both countries also promised to address non-traditional threats together, including terrorism and cybersecurity breaches.

For this purpose, it has been decided that a Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism would be forged along with discussions regarding the India-New Zealand Cyber Dialogue.

Work is also continuing to establish a wide law enforcement agreement, or rather a series of agreements, such as the Memorandum of Arrangement to prevent drug smuggling and trafficking from the ports of both countries or through their territorial waters.

A framework is also being developed to allow for increased cooperation between New Delhi’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the New Zealand Police.