By Xinhua,
New Delhi : Qatar will become the second country in the Gulf region after Oman to have a security pact with India, the Indian Express reported Tuesday.
India is expected to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Qatar, which will include cooperation in defense and security matters, during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s four-day visit to Oman and Qatar beginning this Saturday.
Manmohan Singh will be the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Qatar. Last year, then India’s Defense secretary Shekhar Dutt visited the nation and identified areas for cooperation, including training of personnel, joint exercises and service-to-service information sharing. This was followed by a high level delegation from Qatar, which visited several defense locations in India and three areas, including vacancies for Qatar’s officers in training courses at higher military education institutions, leasing of artillery firing ranges for practice and training, hiring of firing ranges for mechanized forces, were identified for cooperation.
As naval officers from Qatar have already been training in India, the signing of the agreement will institutionalize the cooperation and set up annual programs, official sources said.
India has signed defense cooperation agreements with the United States, United Kingdom, France, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Germany and Japan.
The Prime Minister’s visit to the Middle East is long overdue and is intended to dispel the perception that that India’s foreign policy is skewed towards the United States, the report said.