French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves le Drian, on Friday held meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to prepare ground for the visit of French President, Emmanuel Macron.
Macron is also going to be the guest at the inaugural International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit to be held in India next year. During their meeting, Modi underlined that the significance of India-France Strategic Partnership is not limited to the bilateral context, but acts as a force for peace and stability in the regional and global context as well.
le Drian and Swaraj also held discussions to strengthen cooperation in defence, security, space, civil nuclear and trade sectors. This was le Drian's 10th visit to India but first as the Foreign Minister of France. During their meeting the two FMs reviewed the various aspects of the strategic partnership and discussed new avenues of collaboration.
"I have had very useful and substantive discussions on a wide range of subjects. As President Emmanuel Macron had recalled to Prime Minister Modi during their very first meeting in June this year, we keenly desire to pursue and further strengthen the exceptional strategic partnership that has united India and France since 1998. It was France's first strategic partnership in Asia and for 20 years it has been enriched and continues to be concretised from year to year," le Drian said.
Swaraj said apart from strengthening the partnership in defence-security, space and civil nuclear energy sectors, the two Governments also agreed to consolidate military logistics coordination and enhance cooperation in counter terrorism. "We expressed grave concern on growing terrorism and decided that we need to fight the evil together. We appealed to all countries to oppose those financing, sheltering and providing safe havens to terrorists," Swaraj said at a joint press event with the French Minister after the talks.
On civil nuclear cooperation, she added, both sides discussed ways to operationalise the Jaitapur project without delay.
Talking about various dimensions of the India-France relationship, French FM said the defence partnership is well known through the Rafale and Scorpène projects but it is far broader than that, similar to their cooperation in the Indian Ocean.
"We share not only values but also the same analysis of major international issues. Our bilateral relations must be understood as an expression of this common analysis. On matters such as combating terrorism, maritime security, cooperation in the Indian Ocean — where France and India are two countries belonging to the Indian Ocean Rim — we have a complete commonality of views, which calls for the strengthening of our partnership," he added.