India and Research In Motion move closer to deal on corporate email

India and Research In Motion (RIM) have moved closer to an agreement on lawful access and monitoring of the highly-secure corporate email services on BlackBerry devices, a newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed interior ministry official.

The paper said a series of meetings took place last week between RIM executives and officials from the Indian interior ministry and intelligence agency. 

They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers," it quoted an interior ministry official as saying.    

"Now they have assured us that they will discuss the issue first among themselves and find a way to meet our demands. Later, they would be providing live access to BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server)," the official told the paper. 

An India-based spokesperson for RIM was not immediately available for comment.   

India, among several countries to express concerns that BlackBerry services could be used to stir political or social instability, had initially threatened RIM with a ban if denied access to its highly-secure Messenger and corporate email communications.

Late last month, the Indian government said RIM had set up an interim arrangement for lawful interception of BlackBerry Messenger services and had assured to provide a final solution by the end of January, while a government source had said talks were on over access to corporate emails.