Now that India has lifted the ban on Italian arms giant Leonard, New Delhi and Rome are working towards a strategic defence agreement during Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s visit, which starts tomorrow.
Meloni will meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. Meloni is the main guest at the Raisina Dialogue, and he will also be the first person to speak at the event. Sources with a lot of power have confirmed that work is being done to make a defence agreement with Italy, which hopefully will be finished while Meloni is in Delhi.
After the Westland helicopter scam, defence cooperation between the two countries was at a low point, and A.K. Antony banned any business with Leonardo, which includes Westland.
India had a lot of trouble with the ban, mostly because it can only do business in the defence field with a small number of countries, and getting rid of Leonardo took away one of those options. The Modi government recently got rid of the ban, but the investigations are still going on.
Pakistan wants to buy weapons from Leonardo, especially torpedoes, so lifting the ban has also given India a little bit of power. A Pakistani naval officer named Rear Admiral Abdul Samad went to Leonardo’s Torpedo Production Centre a long time ago to see how the A244/S Mode light-weight torpedoes worked. The Pakistan Navy wanted to buy eight of them. Now, India has even more power. Indian defence ministry officials met with officials from Leonardo and told them it wasn’t a good idea to sell weapons to Pakistan.
The relationship between India and Italy is going to a new level. Meloni is coming, and so is Antonio Tajani, who is Italy’s vice prime minister and foreign minister. This month, Tajani is also here, and he will meet with S. Jaishankar, who is the minister of external affairs.
