Barack Obama and Manmohan Singh at G20 summit

Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday held their first joint talks and agreed to build up strategic partnership in all areas, including fighting terrorism.

During the talks, Dr. Manmohan Singh made clear that Pakistan must show total honesty in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack to book before the talks can be resumed between the two countries.

'We discussed development in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We both agreed that our two countries must work together to counter the forces of terror,' Manmohan Singh replied when asked about his first meeting with President Obama on the sidelines of the G20 summit here.

'We have a international considered partnership with the US. We both have agreed that there are enormous opportunities to strengthen this relationship and to make it more fruitful and strong.'

He described the discussion as 'useful and fruitful' that focused on development of joint relations and how problems of the region can be resolved by interaction between the two countries.

Apart from the global financial condense, the two leaders discussed the entire group of bilateral, regional and global issues, including terrorism, energy security, climate change and the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Is IPL soft target for terror?

The Indian Premier League (IPL), which has now been shifted to South Africa, was the prime target of a large scale terrorist, targeting a host of foreign cricket players, a leading American think-tank Stratfor said today.

"Intelligence of India apparatus is thought to have warned the central government of a flood of specific pressure against both Indian and foreign cricket players," said Stratfor. Based on the intelligence information it has from various sources, Stratfor in its latest analysis said it received indications early on from Indian security sources that the IPL tournament was a prime target for another large-scale Islamist militant operation following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

"Warnings of specific threats against the players came from the governments of the states hosting matches, including Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.” Given that these two states respectively are home to the information technology hubs of Hyderabad and Bangalore both of which have a heavy foreign presence and are where multinational corporations doing business in India are concentrated, these states are at a particularly high risk of attack," it said.