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Indo-Russian military co-operation moves ahead: Fernandes

The draft of the Indo-Russian agreement on defence co-operation till 2010 has been finalised, Defence Minister George Fernandes told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply on Tuesday.

The draft, for the decade beyond December 1999, was finalised during the defence secretary's recent visit to Russia.

Though he refused to disclose the details of activities under the military-technical co-operation between India and Russia, the minister revealed that the draft text provided for a mechanism to implement and monitor long-term military-technical co-operation.

India and Russia had agreed in principle to extend the co-operation in October 1997, during the then defence minister's visit to Russia.

The defence minister said India would decide on the resumption of military exchanges and exercises with the United States only after that country re-establishes all streams of defence co-operation with India.

Following India's nuclear tests, a Pentagon spokesman had announced the cessation of all military exchanges and training exercises with India.

In the light of this announcement, no armed forces or defence-related exchanges with the US are anticipated in the near future, Fernandes said.

The defence minister noted that the Washington Post has reported that US military exercises with Pakistan would take place as scheduled in August.

He said the government had not taken any decision to curtail the number of soldiers in the army, but the army has formulated a plan for under-posting 50,000 soldiers in a phased manner. This would generate savings of more than Rs 10 billion during 1997-98 to 2001-2002. All factors including the combat preparedness of the army and the national security has been taken into consideration while formulating this plan.

The money saved thus would be utilised for the army's modernisation programme and for improving the quality of life of the soldiers.

In reply to another question, the minister admitted that at present there was a shortage of 13,323 officers and 38,000 other personnel in the army.

But as 71,000-odd recruits were currently under training, the deficiency of personnel below officers rank was only notional, he said.

He noted that various measures have been initiated by the government to make up for the shortage in the officer cadre, including the implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations.

Fernandes said six task forces have been constituted by the ministry of defence to submit recommendations to enhance the partnership between the defence and industry ministries.

These joint task forces have been constituted to submit recommendations in the following areas: Defence-industry long term partnership, commercial process, DRDO- industry partnership, private sector undertaking/ordnance factories/private sector complimentarity, defence export strategy and information technology for defence.

UNI

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