Sale of more Rafales, Scorpenes & Naval helicopters on table

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 4/19/2021 11:25:16 AM


New Delhi, Apr 18 On Friday, French foreign minister Jean Yves le Drian left India after a three-day visit to India which covered a wide range of bilateral and multilateral subjects. The visit, third of a senior French minister in four months, was the final preparatory meeting between the two nations for the likely visit of Narendra Modi to Paris next month. After a pandemic-forced hiatus which put a severe limitation on high-level bilateral meetings between India and France, the two nations seem to be in a rush to catch up on the lost time and revive the momentum that has been building up in the bilateral ties over the past decade, but especially since Narendra Modi’s first visit as Prime Minister to Paris in April 2015. Now, it seems the two countries are banking on a repeat of the exercise to inject fresh energy into the relations from the top with a summit meeting between Modi and the French President Emmanuel Macron. Highly placed sources say that the two countries are in serious discussions for finalising a packed agenda for a visit by Modi to Paris on May 9, after he concludes the EU-India Summit meet that will take place on May 8 at Porto in Portugal. Indeed, Modi will have a handful of issues to discuss with Macron and the two nations have been quietly thrashing out an agenda covering a very wide range of topics – from intensive defence cooperation to the longpending negotiations over building of six EPR nuclear reactors at Jaitapur in Maharashtra as well as broadening the bilateral cooperation in technology, environment, urban development and climate change. In all of these areas, France has several products and services that it is keen to sell to India. Defence is set to occupy the centre stage in the agenda during the meeting just as was the case during the 2015 visit by Modi. That visit changed a lot in the Indo-French relations and perhaps most importantly for France it removed the bottleneck in the long-pending negotiations over purchase by the Indian Air Force of Rafale, Dassault’s multi-role medium-range combat aircraft. Taking a bold, but highly controversial and non-transparent route, Modi agreed with the then French President Francois Hollande to enter into a government to government deal for the purchase of 36 Rafales, terminating ongoing negotiations for 128 aircraft. Since then, there has been a major growth in French interest in India, partly because India’s purchase of Rafales prevented a closure of the manufacturing plant of Rafale and a premature death.

 

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