India and Italy have established a “startup bridge” to elevate their bilateral relationship to the level of strategic partnership, and have concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on defence cooperation.
“Today, we are announcing the establishment of a ‘Startup Bridge’ between India and Italy. Another important area of our mutual cooperation is defence. We have also decided to organise the joint military exercises and training courses on a regular basis,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a joint press statement after talks with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, who is currently visiting New Delhi. This is the first official visit to India of Prime Minister Meloni.
Modi also invited Italy to partner in the ‘Make in India’ initiative. Both leaders laid special focus on the areas of renewable energy, green hydrogen, IT, and telecom, space among others. The two leaders agreed on the potential for defence equipment co-development and co-production in India.
Welcoming Italy’s active participation in the Indo-Pacific, Modi said that Italy had decided to join the Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative (IPOI). “This will enable us to identify concrete themes for enhancing our cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.”
Italy reiterated its strong condemnation of the unlawful and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine by Russian armed forces, the joint statement issued after the talks said.
Meloni said with its G20 Presidency, India could very much represent the interests of the global south. Talking of the situation in Ukraine, she said, “We hope that India having a G20 Presidency can play a central role in facilitating a negotiating process for the cessation of hostilities for a just peace [in Ukraine]. Keeping the multilateral community united is important and we hope the Indian Presidency can do even more.”
In this regard, Meloni pledged complete support from Italy for the upcoming G20 summit. “PM Modi knows that he can rely on us, on our cooperation and full round support for the upcoming G20 summit, and to further enhance our relationship. I firmly believe that there is a lot we can do together,” she added.
In addition to defence, both the countries have identified space, cyber and sea as specific strategic areas for cooperation and said work would now begin to identify specific proposals for cooperation.
Both the leaders also talked of the increasing bilateral trade which last year reached an all-time high of US$15bn. As part of the consultations, a CEO roundtable was held between business delegations of the two sides.
India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said the two leaders agreed to expand cooperation in the field of space and welcomed bilateral exchanges and took stock of the wide potential of possible joint research projects in areas such as remote sensing, satellite communication, lunar exploration, gravitational wave detection and practical applications of space technology between ISRO and ASI Italy.
“With the legacy issues behind us, the door is now open for industries to cooperate more strongly, particularly in the field of manufacturing, co-production, co-design and co-innovation,” he said.
The relations between the two countries had soured after the controversial deal to buy the AgustaWestland helicopters, and the arrest of two Italian marines for allegedly killing unarmed fishermen off the southern Indian coast in 2012.
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