Vikram Misri, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Anne-Marie Descourtes, Secretary-General of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, during Indo-French Foreign Ministry consultations in Paris, January 21, 2025. Photo: X/@MEAIndia via PTI
India and France are trading in the ‘high-end technology sector’ as senior officials hold foreign ministry talks in Paris to discuss long-pending civil nuclear cooperation issues ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit next month. agreed to strengthen cooperation.
A delegation led by Foreign Minister Vikram Misri met with France’s Secretary-General for Europe and Foreign Affairs Anne-Marie Descourtes and Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrault, including the newly appointed Indian Ambassador to France Sanjeev Singla.
Mr. Modi will visit Paris for the Action Summit on Artificial Intelligence on February 10 and 11. The officials also discussed the Prime Minister’s plans and bilateral agenda during the visit. Last week, a French minister announced that India would serve as “co-chair” of the summit.
Mr. Misri and Mr. Decourt hosted a meeting of the Indo-French Special Task Force on Civil Nuclear Energy, which was decided during Mr. Macron’s visit to India in January last year. In a joint statement issued a year ago, the two countries agreed to convene a special task force “within three months.”
Jaitapur project
In particular, issues surrounding the Jaitapur nuclear power project in Maharashtra, which has been delayed significantly despite French energy company EDF (Electricite De France) submitting a revised techno-commercial proposal for 2022, are It has not been resolved through negotiations.
India and France signed a civil nuclear agreement in 2008 and the first MoU for the 990MW Jaitapur power plant in 2009. Government officials said high project costs, time overruns and gridlock over India’s nuclear civil liability law continued. Damage Law, 2010) is one of the issues still being discussed in the Jaitapur project, even as India and France aim to collaborate on small modular reactors. future.
The two countries discussed a number of areas of bilateral cooperation, including “defense, civil nuclear power, space, cyber, digital and AI,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“The two sides agreed to expand bilateral partnership in the field of high-end technology,” the statement said, adding that the two sides also discussed geopolitical issues such as the situation in West Asia and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
issued – January 22, 2025 2:30 AM IST
