A Research In Motion employee displays a BlackBerry at a product launch in Mumbai in 2007. The Canadian maker of BlackBerry, involved in a security scrap with India, has promised customers it will not allow New Delhi to read text messages sent on its mobiles.

The Canadian maker of BlackBerry, involved in a security scrap with India, has promised customers it will not allow New Delhi to read text messages sent on its mobiles.

India, battling a host of insurgencies in places ranging from Muslim-majority Kashmir to the northeast, has raised fears the popular device made by Research in Motion (RIM) could be used by terrorists to communicate.

RIM said it had held talks with the Indian government over encryption in its BlackBerries and wished to "assure customers" it was committed to "serving security-conscious businesses in the Indian market with highly secure" products that "satisfy the needs of both business and government."

"Governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs without compromising commercial security requirements," RIM added in a statement received by AFP on Tuesday.

The statement followed requests by India's department of telecommunications and security agencies for "the master key" to allow them access to contents sent between the mobile devices.

BlackBerry's security system, however, is based on "a key system whereby the customer creates their own key and only the customer ever possesses a copy of their encryption key," RIM said.

The Canadian company does not possess a "master key" to gain "unauthorized access" to data and there is no "back door" in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain access, the company added.

Industry estimates say there are up to 400,000 Blackberry users in India's mobile market which is the world's fastest growing.

© 2008 AFP