PM to vist Moscow, defence argeement high on agenda

India and Russia are all set to sign an umbrella agreement targeted at streamlining the maintenance of defence tools used by the Indian armed forces. The significant agreement will be signed when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Russia between December 6 and 8. The agreement will help in getting over the problem of ad-hoc arrangements in the maintenance of defence equipment and ensure timely upkeep of weapons supplied by the Russian firms. Former Soviet Union and now Russia has traditionally been arms suppliers to India, and in recent years, Israel and US have emerged as rivals for the Indian arms market. This agreement will provide an institutional mechanism for post -sale services in defence equipment. Similarly, an other pact will be signed to extend the existing India- Russia Long Term Inter-Governmental Agreement on the programme for Military Technical Cooperation for a further 10 years, from 2011 to 2020. The second agreement is an important pact to enable all the defence talks between the governments at an institutional level. This provides for all official-level interactions, downwards from the PM-level talks. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be leaving for Russia on Sunday for the annual summit talks with President Dmitry Medvedev. An official statement read that Manmohan Singh will visit Moscow for three days at the invitation of Medvedev for the annual bilateral Indo-Russian summit. The Prime Minister will hold talks with Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in addition to having several other engagements. Singh will attend the closing ceremony of the Year of India festival in Russia at the Bolshoi Theatre.  Singh and Medvedev are likely to expand the civil nuclear cooperation between India and Russia. The agreement to build civilian nuclear reactors in India was signed in December 2008 during a visit by the Russian President to New Delhi. The two countries will also hope to increase bilateral trade from $7 billion to $20 billion by 2015. The situation in Afghanistan-Pakistan and terrorism are also likely to figure in the Prime Minister’s talks with Russian officials