Full Story @India / Kerala News
India and Russia will sign next week the long-awaited agreement on Indian acquisition of the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.
Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes and his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov will sign the $1.67 billion deal, one of the biggest between the two countries that see themselves as strategic partners, on January 20, officials said.
The deal includes retrofitting of the carrier and supply of 28 MiG-29K jet fighters and five K-28 and K-31 helicopters fitted with anti-submarine and radar equipment.
The deal was to be signed in November shortly after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Russia. But haggling over a cost-escalation clause delayed the agreement.
Russia wanted 15 percent extra payment towards cost escalation but, after hard bargaining, settled for half the percentage.
The purchase of the 44,000-tonne aircraft carrier, now decommissioned and berthed in a Black Sea port, has been hanging fire since 1994 because the two countries had not been able to agree on the price for refitting the ship according to the Indian Navy's requirements.
The aircraft carrier, 237 metres long and 53 metres wide, was built at a Ukraine shipyard and commissioned in 1987 before the break-up of the Soviet Union.
As part of the deal, the Russians also insisted on fitting the carrier with Kashtan missile systems that provides for self-defence of the ship against high precision weapons.
But India rejected the missiles as their performance was found to be not up to the mark during trials. The Russians then offered a modified Kashtan-M missile system.
Indian officials said the new system would be put through tests before taking a decision on their installation.
"They didn't want Israeli or French missiles to be mounted on the ship but that will depend on how the new Kashkan missiles perform," a senior official told IANS.
Gorshkov is an important deal for both India and Russia. The Indian Navy's reach and strike capability will multiply when the aircraft carrier is delivered after the retrofit in 2006-07.
For Russia, the deal ensures continued employment in 52 enterprises, besides maintaining its traditionally strong military cooperation with India.
Russia currently accounts for 70 percent of the equipment used by the Indian military, although countries like Israel, South Africa, Britain and France have been increasingly cutting into its share.
The sources said negotiations for the purchase of four Tupelov TU-22 backfire, long-range supersonic bombers from Russia were still to be finalized, as New Delhi is keen that a maintenance base be set up for the planes in India.
Once details of the base are worked out, the deal would be signed, officials said.
Posted by Muddy at January 18, 2004 05:14 PM | TrackBackThis is kinda scary.. if you think the U.S. has poverty problems and we spend too much on the military how about India. Geezzz... the majority of their population is in poverty yet their building nukes and buying up Aircraft Carriers they don't need. Talk about paranoid.
Posted by: muddy at January 18, 2004 05:16 PMCompletely agree with Muddy. When I visited India I was shocked at the circumstances of living there... Buying Aircraft Carriers by Indians doesn't sound rational to me at all.
Posted by: Air at November 25, 2004 03:30 PM