Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri with Secretary-General of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs Anne-Marie Descôtes during the India-France Foreign Office Consultations in Paris on January 21, 2025. Photo: X/@MEAIndia via PTI
India and France have agreed to boost cooperation in “high-end technology sectors”, as senior officials held Foreign Office Consultations in Paris, and discussed long-pending civil nuclear cooperation issues ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit next month.
A delegation, led by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and including newly appointed Indian Ambassador to France Sanjeev Singla, met French Secretary-General for Europe and Foreign Affairs Anne-Marie Descôtes and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
Mr. Modi will travel to Paris for a Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence on February 10 and 11. Officials also discussed the Prime Minister’s programme and bilateral agenda during the visit. Last week, a French Minister had announced that India will “co-chair” the summit.
Mr. Misri and Ms. Descôtes held a meeting of the India-France Special Task Force on Civil Nuclear Energy, which was decided during Mr. Macron’s visit to India last January. In the joint statement issued a year ago, the two sides had agreed to convene the Special Task Force “within three months”.
Jaitapur project
In particular, talks between the two sides have not resolved issues on the much-delayed Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in Maharashtra, despite a revised techno-commercial offer being made by French energy company EDF (Electricite De France) in 2022.
India and France signed a civil nuclear agreement in 2008 and inked the first MoU for the 990-MW Jaitapur plant in 2009. Officials have said that the high project cost, time overruns and the continuing logjam over India’s civil liability law (Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010) are among the issues still being discussed on the Jaitapur project, even as India and France look towards cooperating on Small Modular Reactor in the future.
In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs said that the two sides held talks on a number of areas of bilateral cooperation including “defence, civil nuclear energy, space, cyber and digital and AI”.
“Both sides agreed to expand bilateral partnership in the areas of high-end technology sectors,” the statement said, adding that the two countries had also discussed geopolitical issues, including the situation in West Asia and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Published – January 22, 2025 02:30 am IST
