Ink pacts on sports, innovation, audio-visual production, solar power
New Delhi, March 10
Australia and India on Friday decided to strengthen their defence and security partnership to address the shared challenges and work towards an open, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.
The two sides signed four pacts, including an audiovisual co-production agreement, MoU on cooperation in sports, solar taskforce deal and a letter of intent between Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
In a joint statement, Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese welcomed sustained progress under the defence and security pillar and discussed ways to enhance it. In this respect, they noted the forthcoming 2+2 defence and foreign ministerial dialogue and the meeting of the Defence Ministers which would enhance mutual understanding and coordination of engagements between the two countries.
They acknowledged the increasing interoperability between the respective forces through implementation of the India-Australia Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement and welcomed the arrangements for enhancing maritime domain awareness in the Indian Ocean region, increased defence information sharing and consolidation of mutual access that continue to deepen operational defence cooperation.
The Prime Ministers agreed that, as a practical step, India and Australia might continue to explore aircraft deployments from each other’s territories to build operational familiarity and enhance maritime domain awareness.
“Prime Minister Modi and I discussed the increasingly uncertain global security environment and committed to strengthening the Australia-India defence and security partnership to address shared challenges and work towards an open, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” said Albanese in this respect.
In his media statement, PM Modi said, “We had a detailed discussion on maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region, and on increasing the mutual defence and security cooperation. In the field of defence, we have made remarkable agreements in the last few years, including logistics support for each other’s armed forces.
They expressed satisfaction at the progress under the MoU between India’s Khanij Bidesh (KABIL) and Australia’s Critical Minerals Office and looked forward to the continued development of critical minerals supply chains.