India looks to firm up military ties with Vietnam

NEW DELHI: India and Vietnam will look to further cement military ties with another round of strategic defence talks later this week. Government sources in New Delhi said Vietnam defence minister Phung Quang Thanh will pay a rare visit to India later this week to chair the defence dialogue along with his counterpart Manohar Parrikar.

The Vietnamese defence minister is also one of the seniormost members of the Communist Party of Vietnam. This will be Vietnam's first strategic defence dialogue with the Narendra Modi government, which is overtly seeking to expand military cooperation with the country locked in a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea. PM Modi had himself declared earlier that India is committed to the modernization of Vietnam's military and security forces.

The visit is significant because the strategic defence talks until now have been chaired by defence secretaries from the Indian side and deputy defence ministers from Vietnam.

India had last year announced a $100 million concessional line of credit for defence procurement. During the visit of Vietnam PM Nguyen Tan Dung in October last year, Modi had said that the two countries would move quickly to operationalize the channel so as to enable Vietnam to acquire new naval vessels from India. Vietnam is looking to use these vessels as a deterrent against China in the Spratly islands region in the South China Sea.

Despite warnings from China, ONGC Videsh and PetroVietnam signed an agreement last year for exploration of new oil and gas projects in Vietnam. The Vietnamese PM welcomed participation of Indian firms in exploring new opportunities in midstream and downstream activities in the country's oil and gas sector.