Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Sunday said that as many as 38 countries are sending their defence personnel for training in India and the country is considering encouraging export of defence equipment to these countries.
Without naming the countries for security reasons, Mr. Parrikar said that India is encouraging those countries and giving them more slots so that they depend on India for their defence preparedness.
The Defence Minister was talking to journalists after addressing the valedictory session of a three-day international conference on ‘India and The Indian Ocean – Renewing Maritime Trade and Civilisational Linkages.’
‘All for friendly ties with neighbours’Mr. Parrikar, who advocated a larger role for India in the Indian Ocean region that has a major share in the oil reserves in the world, said that India wants to maintain strong good relations with the neighbouring countries.
“We want to create an atmosphere of peace. We want to build the position of togetherness from strength and friendship and not by threat. That is our target of strengthening our relationship,” Mr. Parrikar said.
Responding to a query about threats from Somali pirates, Mr. Parrikar said the country was capable of dealing with such threats.
As regards the one rank, one pension policy for the defence personnel in the country, Mr. Parrikar said that the OROP policy has been recently finalised by the Defence Department.
Stating that there was only talk of accepting OROP till February, Mr. Parrikar said that his Ministry had submitted a concrete proposal in this regard after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley spoke about the policy in his budget speech.
The three-day conference was jointly organised by the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies (ISCS) and Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS).
