By IANS
New Delhi : France Thursday said that it will support the India-US civil nuclear deal in the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), but expressed disappointment over New Delhi’s scrapping of a proposed $550 million deal for buying 197 French military helicopters.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner held talks with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee here and discussed with him a host of bilateral and global issues, including civil nuclear cooperation and strengthening of defence ties between the two countries.
Kouchner, who began his four-day visit to India Thursday, reiterated France’s support for global civil nuclear cooperation with India and underlined Paris’ willingness to clinch a bilateral nuclear pact with New Delhi during President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to India in January next year, a top official source told IANS.
Kouchner, however, said that it will wait for India to conclude a safeguards pact with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for its civilian nuclear reactors before both sides consider a bilateral pact, which is expected to bring in business worth billions of dollars for French civil nuclear firms.
Mukherjee thanked Kouchner for France’s support in this crucial area but indicated that India would first wait for an across-the-board clearance from the NSG before striking a bilateral nuclear deal with France, the source added.
A proposed inter-governmental agreement between India and Russia for building four additional nuclear reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu could not be signed for a similar reason as New Delhi thought such a pact could not be operationalised before the IAEA pact and the NSG’s nod to the India-US nuclear deal.
France is a world leader in civilian nuclear technology and depends on nuclear power for 83 percent of its energy requirements.
During his meeting with Mukherjee, Kouchner expressed France’s disappointment with the Indian government’s decision to scrap the Eurocopter deal, which was pegged as the showpiece of growing India-France defence ties.
He made a strong pitch for a re-look at the scraped deal. Mukherjee’s response is not known, but there are indications that India may revisit the deal.
Besides Eurocopter, an arm of European aerospace giant EADS, the US’ Bell was the leading contender for the Indian contract to buy new military copters.
The Eurocopter has maintained that it was not officially informed by the Indian defence ministry about the cancellation of the deal and, therefore, it was still in the race. “To my knowledge, the deal has not been suspended. We have never received such an official statement,” Norbert Ducrot, senior vice president of France-based Eurocopter, told reporters here.
The Indian defence ministry announced Dec 6 that the $550 million deal was off due to deficiencies in the evaluation process.
Kouchner, a popular politician in France known as the rock star of humanitarian relief and a co-founder of the Nobel prize-winning Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), also met Congress president and the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chief Sonia Gandhi and discussed with her an array of bilateral and global issues.
Kouchner will call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday and discuss with him issues that will animate Sarkozy’s visit to India in January.
Sarkozy is likely to come here Jan 24 and will be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade – an honour bestowed on the leaders of those countries with which India shares special ties.