Starting Monday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will go on a four-day trip to Italy and France to deepen strategic ties between the two countries and look into ways to work together with businesses to make military equipment.
According to the defense ministry, Singh’s first stop on his two-nation tour will be Rome, where he will have a wide range of talks with his Italian colleague Guido Crisetto.
India and Italy’s friendship was raised to a strategic partnership in March, when the prime minister of Italy paid a visit to India.
The government said, “Defense Minister Rajnath Singh will go to Italy and France from October 9 to October 12.”
Singh will meet with Sebastian Lecornu, the French defense minister, at the fifth annual India-France defense discussion in Paris. “India and France just celebrated 25 years of being strategic partners.” The defense minister said in a statement, “Both countries have a deep and broad defense relationship with each other, which includes a lot of industrial cooperation.”
“In both Rome and Paris, the defense minister will also meet with CEOs and senior representatives from the defense industry to talk about possible ways for the two to work together,” the statement said.
Sources say that Singh will talk about the possibility of working together to build military stations in both Rome and Paris.
In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Paris, where he announced a number of ground-breaking defense cooperation projects. These included working together to make jet and chopper engines and building three Scorpene submarines for the Indian Navy.
In addition, the two key partners said they would work together to create and produce advanced defense technologies, even for the benefit of other countries.
Before Modi’s trip to Paris, the defense ministry gave the go-ahead for the Indian Navy to buy 26 Rafale jets from France. It also gave the go-ahead to buy three Scorpene class submarines built in France.
