Quicken military hardware deliveries, India urges Russia

Indo-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI - India Thursday raised with Russia the delays in the delivery of military hardware like an aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine and said a satisfactory solution\” would be found to the issue.

Defence Minister A.K. Antony raised the issue with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov, who is in India for the 10th meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC).

There are some areas of concern such as the delays (in delivery of military hardware). All these issues, we discussed,\” Antony told reporters at a joint press conference with Serdyukov.

But Antony said the two sides have decided to find a satisfactory solution to the issue

\”I am happy about the outcome of the meeting,\” Antony said, adding India and Russia were pursuing a large number of joint projects for defence systems and military equipment.

Serdyukov also assured his counterpart that he would take \”personal interest\” in the projects and satisfactorily solve the problems. But he added that his side too raised certain issues with India.

India had bought the Admiral Gorshkov, to be renamed INS Vikramaditya, in 2004 for $1.5 billion. The delivery was to have been in 2008 but Russia\’s demand for hiking the price has pushed this back to 2012-13. The two sides conducted protracted negotiatons before India finally agreed to pay $2.34 billion early this year.

An Akula-II class nuclear-powered submarine was supposed to be delivered last year but is now expected to be handed over to the Indian Navy only in March 2011. This is because the submarine was damaged during its sea trials.

Serdyukov said \”it is but natural to have some delays as that there was a \”great volume\” of joint projects between the two countries. I will underscore that there are no critical delays in our projects.\”

The Indian delegation at the talks included Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar, Secretary (Defence Production) R.K. Singh, Scientific Adviser to defence minister V.K Saraswat and other senior officials of the defence ministry and the armed forces.

The Russian delegation included representatives from the Russian ministry of defence and the Russian defence industry.

The commission also reviewed the status of several other ongoing and proposed projects, including the licenced production of T-90 main battle tanks and the establishment of repair and overhaul facilities for various Russian origin defence equipment in India.

The IRIGC-MTC was established in 2000 to further bilateral defence cooperation between India and Russia.

Russia is the only country with which India has an institutionalised mechanism at the level of the defence ministers.

Prior to the meeting, the two leaders held separate discussions on various issues of regional and global security.

The Russian minister said his country\’s chief of defence forces would visit India in November, while the Russian naval chief would visit in January 2011.