France to expand security cooperation with Asian nations

By C. Raja Mohan

PARIS, FEB. 11.While promoting European defence integration, France is seeking to expand its security cooperation with key Asian nations, including India.

French policy planners are keen to develop a ``large spectrum of defence cooperation'' with India, Japan, Singapore and other major Asian powers, according to sources in the French Government. The range of expanded defence engagement involves three important elements - exchange of views on threat perceptions and doctrines, concrete cooperation with military forces, and defence industrial interaction.

The Defence Minister, Mr. Alain Richard, who is giving a new thrust to the French engagement of Asia, hopes to visit India in the next few months.

The four rounds of Indo-French strategic dialogue during the last year and a half as well as the bilateral interaction at the high- level defence committee have begun enhancing the security partnership between the two nations.

The strategic dialogue initiated in September 1998 has already resulted in the much better appreciation here of Indian security concerns and the strategic thinking in New Delhi. It has also led to a convergence of views on the need to build a ``multipolar world''. Defence contacts between the two sides have multiplied in the recent years, and will culminate in a major joint naval exercise next week in the Arabian Sea. Eight French naval vessels will call at Mumbai for this exercise, signaling the convergence of the interests of the two nations in the Indian Ocean.

According to the Sources, France does not see India only in the context of Asia, but also as a key player in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean region. France and India see the expansion of regional military exercises as part of the efforts to build stability and security in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

France is also looking for a major breakthrough in the defence industrial field to consolidate the security partnership. The volume of French arms sales to India has increased in the last few years - from 100 million dollars to about 400 million dollars.

Though the two sides are considering some major projects on fighter and trainer aircraft as well as naval submarines, none of them has been clinched.

There is hope, however, here that early Indian decisions on one or two ``emblematic'' defence purchases would kick-start substantive defence industrial cooperation between the two countries.

France is aware of the slow and complex decision- making process on defence purchases in India, but believes an early decision on a major transaction would signal the political will in India for long-term defence cooperation. France does not reckon defence projects with India as a series of commercial deals, but part of the bid to build a sustainable security partnership with New Delhi.

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Section  : International
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