India to sign biggest defence deal with US next week

Mehta, who was scheduled to leave for the US on Saturday night for a 10-day visit, said that the Government tried to finalise the deal in the last financial year itself, but a few technical points had held it up. “We were planning to place the order in the last financial year but now we are just a couple of days away from doing that,” said Mehta, who is also the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC). He was talking at the sidelines of the IISS-Citi India Global Forum.

The Boeing P-8i had out done its European rival, the EADS A 319, during trials by the Navy earlier this year and the company is in final commercial negotiations with Defence Ministry.

However, the Navy Chief brushed aside suggestions that India needs to sign an ‘end-user agreement’ with the US by saying that as a sovereign nation, India would not accept any “intrusiveness” or restrictions on the use of defence equipment.

“As a sovereign nation, we can’t accept intrusiveness into our system, so there is some difficulty. We pay for the technology and what we do with it is our business,” Mehta, who took part in a plenary session on India’s Defence Diplomacy at the IISS event, said.

Earlier during the session, former head of the US Pacific Command (PACOM), Admiral Dennis Blair had suggested that India needs to sign three “routine” agreements including the end-user agreement, logistics support agreement and the communications interoperability and security memorandum of agreement to speed up Indo-US defence relations.