U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is scheduled to visit India on December 8 which will be an opportunity for both countries to review the progress achieved in deepening defence ties over the last three years before the change of administration in the U.S.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Mr. Carter will review the progress of various initiatives taken to deepen high technology cooperation, officials said. No major decisions are expected. “This is not the time for big deals,” defence sources observed. Mr. Carter and Mr. Parrikar have met five times this year.
The highlight will likely be the finalisation of the provisions for the ‘Major Defence Partner’ status which the U.S. had designated India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington in June. “We shared a paper with them on the provisions and they got back which was not satisfactory. They said they would come back with a revised one…,” a senior official said.
Last week the House and Senate Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Congress had asked Mr. Carter and the U.S. Secretary of State to conduct an assessment of the India’s capabilities to support and carry out military operations of mutual interest.
Logistics pact
Meanwhile, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Understanding (LEMOA) — one of the three foundational agreements which India signed with the U.S. early this year — is yet to be operationalised. “LEMOA turned out to be a fairly complicated accounting exercise,” a senior official said.
This is because each service has their own system in place for accounting and payments and now efforts on to put in place a unified system. To sort out the issue, the Defence Ministry has held three meetings with the services. “We will try to get a system going. Finance and accounting people are working on it. We will hold another meeting and fix it,” the official added.
