NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron trumpeted a $1.1 billion defence deal with India yesterday, an early result of a big diplomatic push to court Indian business and tap new sources of economic growth.
In comments likely to please New Delhi and upset Islamabad, Cameron said India’s arch rival Pakistan should not “promote the export of terror”. That comes days after a huge leak of U.S. documents raised questions about Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan and its support for the Taliban.
On his first visit to India since taking office in May, Cameron took six ministers and more than 30 senior executives from top UK firms with him, to show Britain is serious about boosting economic exchanges with Asia’s third-largest economy.
BAE Systems, Europe’s biggest defence contractor, and engine maker Rolls-Royce were early winners. They signed a deal worth about $1.1 billion with a state-run Indian firm to supply 57 Hawk trainer jets to India, one of the world’s biggest defence markets.
While Cameron toured Bangalore, his finance minister George Osborne was in Mumbai to persuade to free up its financial services market and hasten the signing of a free trade deal between India and the European Union.
Sources in Cameron’s entourage also said London had decided to start granting licences to its civil nuclear firms to export to India, opening up prospects of deals potentially worth billions. The move follows in Washington’s lead and is intended to build trust with India to help business ties.
“I want this to be a relationship which drives economic growth upwards and drives our unemployment figures downwards,” Cameron said in a speech to young Indian business leaders at the high-tech Infosys campus in Bangalore.
“This is a trade mission, yes, but I prefer to see it as my job’s mission,” he said.
India, a former British colony, belongs to the “BRIC” group of rapidly growing emerging economies along with China, Brazil and Russia, the likes of which Britain is hoping to tap as it seeks to offset drastic public spending cuts at home.
Cameron has often lamented that Britain trades more with Ireland than it does with all the BRICs combined and he has vowed to remedy that with vigorous pro-trade diplomacy.
Cameron said yesterday that Pakistan must not become a base for militants and “promote the export of terror” across the globe, saying their bilateral ties depended on that.
The remarks are likely to cheer officials in New Delhi, which has long accused its neighbour of backing strikes on Indian targets including the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
“We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world,” he said.
