PARIS: Indian prime minister announced on Friday that New Delhi had ordered 36 Rafale fighter jets from France in a multi-billion-euro agreement that has been years in the making.

Standing alongside his counterpart Francois Hollande on a visit to France — the first leg of his maiden trip to Europe — Narendra Modi finally relieved the frantic speculation over whether tortuous, years-long negotiations on buying the jets would ever bear fruit.

“I asked the president (Hollande) to supply us with 36 Rafale jet fighter planes, the ready-to-fly models,” Mr Modi said at a joint news conference at the Elysee Palace.

While long-blocked exclusive negotiations between the two sides had initially focused on 126 French Rafales, the 36-jet order is manufacturer Dassault’s biggest yet abroad — estimated to be worth nearly $4.2 billion.

Paris sold 24 Rafale jets to Egypt earlier this year.

Negotiations to buy the planes kicked off in 2012 but had been bogged down over cost and New Delhi’s insistence on assembling a portion of the high-tech planes in India.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters after Mr Modi’s announcement that all 36 jets would be manufactured in France.

Negotiations, meanwhile, continue on finalising the initial 126-jet agreement.

Indian defence analyst Saurabh Joshi said the country’s air force urgently needed new jets to update its ageing fleet in view of rivalry with both Pakistan and China. As such, India has launched a vast defence modernisation programme worth some $100bn.

Mr Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist, was effectively blacklisted by the European Union for years, accused of encouraging deadly communal riots in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat, which he governed for over a decade.

But after his landslide victory in a general election last year, and with India’s economy now growing faster than even China’s, France is rolling out the red carpet for the one-time outcast.

“France has always been a reliable supplier for India from jet fighters to submarines,” Mr Modi said, pointing to cooperation in a number of sectors such as space, nuclear energy and defence.

Mr Hollande said he was “deeply moved” by the announcements and said they took the partnership between the two countries “into a new gear”.

French nuclear giant Areva is still awaiting the go-ahead to install six reactors in India’s western state of Maharashtra, five years after a bilateral civil nuclear accord.

Nothing was announced on this particular accord, but India and France signed agreements in a raft of other sectors such as space and transport.

They also discussed cooperation in the fight against extremism.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2015

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