Indian and French leaders vowed Monday to boost nuclear energy co-operation at an annual summit on EU-India ties dominated by trade, global warming and the world financial crisis. "France, which has great trust in India and its prime minister, has worked hard so that India can have access to civilian nuclear energy," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
He made the comment at a press conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who arrived in France from the US, where he took India a major step closer to rejoining global nuclear commerce after 30 years in the cold.
Singh was to meet Tuesday in Paris with French political leaders and nuclear energy executives and was expected to sign a major nuclear trade pact. If the deal goes through, French nuclear giant Areva said Monday it hoped to negotiate the delivery to India of two third-generation European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs), as well as nuclear fuel.
The US House of Representatives on Saturday passed a major atomic energy pact with New Delhi, which if it gets Senate approval will allow India access to Western technology and cheap atomic energy, provided it allows UN inspections of some of its nuclear facilities.
India was banned from nuclear trade three decades ago after it carried out its first nuclear test and refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but the Vienna-based Nuclear Suppliers Group lifted the ban earlier this month after hard lobbying by Washington. Sarkozy said at Monday's summit in the southern French port of Marseille that European Union and Indian leaders had decided to "accelerate talks" aimed at reaching a free trade deal.
Singh, the leader of the world's largest democracy and one of its fastest growing economies, said he wanted the agreement signed by the end of 2009. The European Union is India's largest commercial partner - ahead of China - with annual bilateral trade totalling around 60 billion euros (88 billion dollars). But India ranks only ninth behind South Korea in the EU's list of major trading partners.
Europe is keen to boost ties with the emerging Asian giant, which is seen as a relative haven of stability in an often volatile region which includes Pakistan and Afghanistan. The global financial crisis also figured in the Marseille talks.
India has so far been relatively unscathed by the meltdown in the US banking system, but on Monday European banks were again caught up in the turmoil, with bail-outs, sales and attacks on the shares of financial institutions multiplying across the continent.
Sarkozy said that during their talks Singh had shared the French president's call for a global summit to establish "a new international financial system." Climate change was also dicussed during the talks that lasted about an hour. Brussels has long accused New Delhi of failing to make stringent efforts to reduce carbon emissions, while India has underlined its status as a developing country that cannot be expected to slow its modernisation.
"The world needs India in its fight against global warming," said Sarkozy, noting that he did not see how "India can fight global warming without nuclear energy, which is a clean energy." A joint statement issued at the end of the summit said the EU and India would work to reach an agreement on climate change by the end of 2009, but gave no details.
Some EU lawmakers last week voiced concerns over human rights abuses in India, in particular about attacks by extremist Hindus against Christians. But European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, also speaking at Monday's press conference, said that "we appreciate the vigour and clarity of Mr Singh's comments, he has clearly condemned these attacks."
Hindu-Christian violence occurs periodically in India, where 2.3 percent of the country's population of more than 1.1 billion are Christians. Hard-line Hindus accuse missionaries of bribing poor tribal and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity by offering free education and health care.
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