By NNN-PTI
New Delhi : Taking their strategic partnership to a higher plane, India and France Friday decided to bolster their civil nuclear cooperation for which an agreement has been finalised.
After wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and French President Nicolas Sarkozy here, the two sides also decided to push their defence ties “beyond buyer-seller relationship” and set a bilateral trade target of 12 billion euros to be achieved by 2012.
Hailing India’s record on non-proliferation, Sarkozy strongly favoured changes in global rules to allow New Delhi to have civil nuclear cooperation with the international community.
The two sides signed five agreements, including one for construction and operation of a nuclear reactor in France. A pact for transfer of sentenced prisoners was also signed.
“France and India have decided to give a new impetus to their strategic cooperation for development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes as an expression of their strategic partnership,” said a joint statement issued after the talks.
Noting that the two countries wanted to “broaden and boost” their partnership in atomic field, the statement said “to this end, France and India have finalised negotiation in regard to reaching a bilateral agreement for civil nuclear cooperation.”
The agreement will form the basis of wide-ranging bilateral cooperation from basic and applied research to full civil nuclear cooperation, including reactors, it said.
Signing of the pact, however, will have to await firming up of a India-IAEA safeguards agreement.