France and India sign 36 Rafale fighters jets

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Hollande has reached an agreement to buy 36 Rafale jets in “fly-away” condition, on their specifications and weapons systems. Both are confident the financial aspect would be resolved soon. Indian defence minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counter part Jean- Yves Le Drian signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the Inter Governmental agreement pertaining to technical aspects of the Rafale deal on the eve of their Republic Day.

Dassault Aviation, Manufacturer of Rafale, said “ We are very pleased with this progress, and are actively supporting French Authorities in their efforts to finalise a complete agreement within the next four weeks. India and France also agreed to renew their bilateral agreement on defence cooperation, which was signed in 2006 by another 10 years.

For the first time the two countries came out with a strongly-worded joint statement on counter-terrorism and asked for decisive action to be taken against “ Lashkar-e- Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani network and other terrorist groups such as al Qaeda”. “ Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the Perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future”.