New Delhi: India and the US need to augment their defence dialogue and cooperation in order to get the best out of the civil nuclear treaty, a former National Security Adviser to the US President said yesterday (Jan 11,2007).

Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser to Presidents George W Bush and Gerald Ford, said such a dialogue was important for confidence building as the two democracies in the past have never sat down together and forged a common strategic vision.

"Despite glue of democracy, and the fact that there was absence of any clash, the two countries have not been really engaged properly far," he said.

 "With this deal in place, we are just at the threshold. We do not understand each other much, yet. We have a blank slate," he said while delivering a lecture on US-India strategic relations.

"There was never had any intimate, continuing dialogue form a common strategic vision and a common belief. There is no common road map," he said, adding the first step in this direction should be to establish a broad cooperation within the governments and private sector of the two countries.

On the issue of technology transfer, Scowcroft admitted that the two countries have not been sharing much of the production technologies and knowhow on a significant scale.

"We could start with sharing of space technologies. This will be a learning process for both sides. And then gradually move on to other areas," he said.

 A former lieutenant general in US Airforce, Scowcroft was invited by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to speak on.

 The Future of US-India Strategic Relationship: Security & Defence Implications in the backdrop of Indo-US nuclear deal.