A Discussion on Some Special Issues of Defence Cooperation of India with Germany and Italy

Abstract

As we have noted earlier, India made sustained effort in the nineties to reach out to Europe, and more particularly to UK, Germany and France. Germany was important to India as a trading partner, as a supplier of technology, as a central state within the fast-emerging European Economic Community and now developing into the European Union. Germany and India shared fundamental political beliefs of democracy and rule of law, even though there were differences of perception about nuclear non-proliferation and human rights and slightly contentious issues of intellectual property rights and complaints about bureaucratic delays, despite the economic reform policy being pursued by the Indian government. Nevertheless, India’s economic reforms had elicited a great deal of interest both in the German official and business world