New Delhi, June 8
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today chaired a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the security situation. The meeting was held in the backdrop of the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the disclosures made by Pakistan-born American terrorist David Coleman Headley linking the ISI with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

Official sources said the 90-minute meeting was attended by Defence Minister AK Antony, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, Home Secretary GK Pillai, three service chiefs, and heads of the Research and Analysis Wing and the Intelligence Bureau.

The meeting is understood to have taken stock of the security situation in Pakistan in the wake of the attack on a key naval base in Karachi last month, and the continuing nexus between the military-intelligence apparatus and terrorist outfits in the neighbouring country. It also reviewed the situation in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's attempts to influence the reconciliation process in view of the phased withdrawal of US troops from that country in July.

The meeting came a day after Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev formally conveyed to the Indian side Moscow’s reluctance to set up a nuclear plant at Haripur in West Bengal in view of the agitation over land acquisition. He is also understood to have conveyed to New Delhi that Russia was willing to build the nuclear plant at any other coastal site, preferably in Orissa.