New Delhi, Dec 1 (IANS) India and France will sign several agreements on civil nuclear cooperation, space and film co-production during the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy later this week.
Sarkozy will arrive in Bangalore Dec 4 on a four-day visit to India. He will be accompanied by his wife, Carla Bruni, and a high-level delegation comprising of ministers and top businessmen.
In Bangalore, Sarkozy will visit the Indian Space Research Organisation, where he would see the Indo-French project Megha-Tropiques Satellite being jointly developed by ISRO and CNES, the French counterpart of ISRO.
The next day (Dec 5) has been reserved for a private visit to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, where France’s first couple will appreciate the beauty of the Taj Mahal.
The substantive part of the visit will be Dec 6 (Sunday) in New Delh, when Sarkozy will hold delegation-level formal talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
At a press conference here Wednesday, the external affair ministry’s joint secreteary (Europe-West), T.P. Seetharam, said that Nuclear Power Coorporation of India Limited and Areva were neogiating a framework agreement for early works, which could be signed if the talks were wrapped up.
‘The agreement between Areva and NPCIL is likely to be a commercial kind of agreement. But in addition, for all this to be facilitated, it may be necessary to have some government-to-government agreements for such arrangements, such as the confidentiality agreement and intellectual property rights, etc., which are also being looked at,’ he said.
Besides civil nuclear cooperation, the two countries are also looking at space and joint production of films.
‘The space cooperation would be in terms of what they call an Earth Systems Science and Climate Programme, which is science-oriented which would naturally have the requirement for a satellite launch,’ said Seetharam.
