Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit France in April. Modi on Thursday invited French companies to take advantage of the ‘Make-In-India’ programme in various sectors while pointing out the liberalised FDI regime in India.
Recalling his meeting with President Hollande on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Brisbane last year to the visiting French Foreign Minister laurent Fabius, Modi said that he was looking forward to his visit to France in April. later on, speaking to the Press here after holding discussions with Modi and Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Fabius sought to suggest that the COP 21 in Paris will be different.
Acknowledging that the past conferences on climate change had strived to tackle the major issues at a much later stage of the summits, the COP 21 will begin with vital issues to achieve more effective solutions. Fabius will chair the Paris summit in December this year.
COP 21 will produce more concrete results with France acting as the facilitator listening to all members impartially, he said, adding but getting 195 countries across the table to reach an agreement is not an easy task either. There has to be a spirit of compromise in the process even though ambition is important, he maintained.
Fabius said that the member countries should come up with their Intended National Determined Contribution (INDC) soon so that it can be discussed in detail prior to the Paris summit. Calling his meeting with the PM and Environment Minister fruitful, he informed that the key areas of bilateral cooperation between France and India include curbing terrorism, clean energy, smart cities, tourism, education amongst others.
Meanwhile, spokesperson for Ministry of External Affairs Syed Akbaruddin said that India’s nuclear agreement with each country is different. With France, which supplies India nuclear fuel, he said, “The template is already set.”
On nuclear agreement with USA, India has said that nothing has been done outside the framework of Indian law. “When we arrived at the understanding with the US, we did so within the four corners of our law, international practice and our own bilateral agreement that we have agreed to,” Akbaruddin said.