Rajnath Singh urges Netherlands counterpart to ensure Dutch firms don’t provide weapons, tech to Pak

After the meeting, Singh in a post on X said they looked forward to “further deepen and elevate” the bilateral defence partnership.

During the meeting, Singh conveyed his concern over cross-border terrorism that has emanated from Pakistan over the last several decades due to which India has suffered, the sources said.

He urged Berkelmans to ensure that Dutch companies do not provide weapons, platforms or technology to Pakistan, they said.

It is learnt that Singh also conveyed that providing platforms or technology to Pakistan is potentially detrimental to peace and stability in the region.

The defence ministry in a statement said the two ministers explored the possibilities of collaboration in shipbuilding, equipment and space sectors, optimising the complementariness in skills, technology and scale of the two countries.

“Delighted to meet the young and dynamic Defence Minister of Netherlands, Mr. Ruben Berkelmans in New Delhi. We reviewed the full range of India-Netherlands defence cooperation. We look forward to further deepen and elevate our defence partnership. The areas of our discussion included defence, cyber security, Indo-Pacific and emerging technologies like AI,” Singh said in his post on X.

The two leaders discussed elevating the bilateral cooperation in areas like defence, security, information exchanges, Indo-Pacific and new and emerging technologies, the statement said.

They also discussed working together in domains like AI and related technologies, besides connecting the respective defence technology research institutes and organisations, it said.