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Led by Singh and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who arrived here this morning, the cabinet meetings between the two sides saw wide-ranging talks on bilateral, regional and international issues such as cooperation in the strategic areas of defence and security, trade and UN Security Council reforms.
"We discussed the developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Terrorism is a serious challenge which will have to be fought on all fronts and not selectively," Singh told a joint press conference with Merkel.
"India and Germany have the same goal in Afghanistan, as an independent country with security in its hands.
Afghanistan should develop an independent security architecture," Merkel said.
She said Germany will be hosting the next conference on Afghanistan by the end of the year in which the issue of reconciliation process will be discussed in detail.
After the talks, India and Germany also inked four pacts to expand their cooperation in areas relating to education, research and high-tech areas like nuclear physics.
Asked about nuclear energy safety norms, Singh said every effort would be made to ensure that all safety norms in the generation and utilisation of nuclear energy are "world class".
"Today our nuclear energy is three per cent of our total energy generation. Our capacity is less than 5,000 MW.
We want to raise it to 20,000 MW by the year 2020," he said.
He said if India has to meet the emission targets, the country will have to have a combination of nuclear energy and renewable energy sources.
Stressing the need for "broad-based" mix of nuclear energy and other sources of energy, Merkel said for many years Germany also had mix of both sources of energy and talked about power plants being built in India with the German help.
On UNSC reforms, Singh said both India and Germany were of the opinion that the body should reflect the contemporary reality of the world and were hopeful of a positive result.
"Germany and India are members of G4. We have been arguing for a long time that the global system needs to be brought up to date in tune with contemporary realities..The new realities of the global scene have to be taken into account in looking at reform of the global structures of governance," Singh said.
On her part, Merkel said Germany and India will work together for getting a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and stressed on "speeding up the process of the UN reforms". Both Germany and India are currently non-permanent seats in the UN Security Council.
