India, France agree to intensify defence, space & civilian nuclear cooperation

Marseille: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday held wide-ranging discussions with French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot on a range of issues and the two sides agreed to intensify bilateral cooperation in areas like defence, security, space and civilian-nuclear collaboration.

Jaishankar also expressed India’s “deep appreciation” to France for the strong condemnation of the cross-border terrorist attack that took place on April 22 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam and thanked Paris for its “steadfast support for India’s right to defend itself against terrorism”.

Addressing a joint press conference in Marseille after the meeting, he underlined that there has been a “very high degree of trust” between India and France over the years as one looks at their relationship and cooperation.

He said the two sides also discussed global and regional issues like the situation in the Indian subcontinent, the Ukraine conflict, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.

“It has always been our position that this is not an era where differences should be settled through war. We believe that dialogue and diplomacy is the answer... No solutions are going to come out of the battlefield has always been our position. We believe that direct negotiations between the parties concerned are most important,” he said. The minister said this is a widespread sentiment in the world, especially in the Global South, that nobody wants to see this conflict continue and the sooner it is brought to an end, the better it is.

Jaishankar said that the two sides held “wide-ranging discussions, which covered defence, civilian nuclear energy, space, counterterrorism, people-to-people relations, innovation, AI, technology”.

“And, we spent a little while discussing how between education, research, business and mobility, how we can really add new ways of adding more substance to our relationship,” he said. “Defence, security, space, civilian nuclear cooperation, I think we agreed to intensify all of these through very concrete measures and projects in the time to come,” he added.

Jaishankar said they had “very good discussions” and it was a pleasure to participate in the Raisina Mediterranean Dialogue here.

On the Indo-Pacific, he said, both nations share a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific where international

law and maritime security are upheld. with agency inputs