MOSCOW – Russia and India stressed their strategic partnership on Monday, agreeing to boost military ties and cooperate in the civilian use of nuclear technology, but gave few details.
“We have discussed the key aspects of our economic and military-technical cooperation,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the start of their official talks in the Kremlin. The two had met for an informal dinner late on Sunday.
“We look into the future with optimism,” Medvedev said. “We will witness the signing of a whole range of important documents reflecting our strategic partnership in its entire diversity.”
Russia sees India, a Cold War ally, as an important partner whose influence will expand in Asia.
The two delegations later signed agreements on “military-technical cooperation”, a term routinely used by the Kremlin to refer to arms sales, for the period 2011-12 and agreed that Russia would build more nuclear reactors in India.
Russia and India, which agreed the outlines of a 10-year weapons deal in October that could be worth at least $10 billion, are building a modern supersonic fighter aircraft invisible to radar like the U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth fighter.
Officials said before the talks that Singh might sign weapons orders including a $1 billion deal for 80 Russian Mi-17 helicopters and contracts for fitting Brahmos missiles to Russian-made Sukhoi fighter planes.
No concrete details of any arms sales were available.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
Medvedev and Singh both expressed support for greater cooperation in the civilian use of nuclear energy.
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