Marseille: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday held wide-ranging discussions with French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot on a range of issues and the two sides agreed to intensify bilateral cooperation in areas like defence, security, space and civilian-nuclear collaboration.
Jaishankar also expressed India’s “deep appreciation” to France for the strong condemnation of the cross-border terrorist attack that took place on April 22 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam and thanked Paris for its “steadfast support for India’s right to defend itself against terrorism”.
Addressing a joint press conference in Marseille after the meeting, he underlined that there has been a “very high degree of trust” between India and France over the years as one looks at their relationship and cooperation.
He said the two sides also discussed global and regional issues like the situation in the Indian subcontinent, the Ukraine conflict, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.
“It has always been our position that this is not an era where differences should be settled through war. We believe that dialogue and diplomacy is the answer… No solutions are going to come out of the battlefield has always been our position. We believe that direct negotiations between the parties concerned are most important,” he said.
The minister said this is a widespread sentiment in the world, especially in the Global South, that nobody wants to see this conflict continue and the sooner it is brought to an end, the better it is.
Jaishankar said that the two sides held “wide-ranging discussions, which covered defence, civilian nuclear energy, space, counterterrorism, people-to-people relations, innovation, AI, technology”.
“And, we spent a little while discussing how between education, research, business and mobility, how we can really add new ways of adding more substance to our relationship,” he said.
“Defence, security, space, civilian nuclear cooperation, I think we agreed to intensify all of these through very concrete measures and projects in the time to come,” he added.
Jaishankar said they had “very good discussions” and it was a pleasure to participate in the Raisina Mediterranean Dialogue here.
On the Indo-Pacific, he said, both nations share a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific where international law and maritime security are upheld. “We discussed joint efforts for collaboration to promote those objectives.”
He also recalled his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday.
“In terms of our strategic partnership, our enduring partnership, it is built on shared values, on a strong sense of sovereignty, our democratic commitment, on independence, on strategic autonomy guiding our foreign policy, and obviously our commitment to multilateralism and respect for international laws,” he said.
“When I look at the horizon, what is important is the India-France Year of Innovation next year, so we are gearing up to use that as an additional new driver of our relationship, and we are in many ways trying to prepare for that,” he said.
In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited France and co-chaired the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris along with Macron.
Jaishankar said his conversations with Barrot also covered the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC), and “our triangular development cooperation, how do we take forward some of our trilateral mechanisms, we have one with the UAE, and with Australia”.
“I look forward to a more detailed conversation about President Macron’s recent visit to the Indo-Pacific,” he added.
Jaishankar termed culture and people-to-people ties between the two countries a “very special aspect of our relationship with France”.
“You welcome a lot of students to this country, we hope that the numbers can grow in the year to come. We also see France as a very valued partner in our national museum project in Delhi.. as well as we discussed cooperation for our National Maritime Heritage Complex that we are building,” he added.
On a query on the AI place crash on Thursday, he said, “It’s been really a very tragic event, and I have been in the last 24 hours, in touch with my counterparts in the UK, Portugal and Canada because they also lost their citizens.”
“We again appreciate very much the condolences, sympathy and support we got from the French government, and I think, we will have to wait to see more authoritative news about whatever has been found and what the analysis show,” he said.
