Beijing: British Prime Minister David
Cameron's visit to India and his moves to take bilateral
cooperation to a new high resembles the close ties the UK has
with the US, China's state media said on Friday.
An article in the web edition of People's Daily, the
mouthpiece of ruling Communist Party of China, said Cameron
underscored the special British-Indian ties in his just
concluded trip to India.
He illustrated his wish for enhanced bilateral
cooperation in the three major fields of economy and trade,
the defence and the nuclear power is particularly obvious.
The article titled "Britain, India also to make
bilateral ties special" said "for Britain, this kind of
relationship usually refers to the ties of alliance between
Britain and the United States, so the implication of Cameron's
remarks seems to be quite profound."
Without making any reference to Cameron's criticism of
Pakistan, China's close ally, the article picked on British
Business Secretary Vince Cable's remarks that British
government will first permit the export of nuclear energy to
India for civil use.
"India has so far not signed the Nuclear Non-
proliferation Treaty and the British government had long been
in opposition to exporting its nuclear technology and
equipment to India," it said without referring to the Indo-US
nuclear deal.
"Nevertheless, the British government considers it
necessary now to differentiate the civil and military nuclear
facilities and, so it would be likely to issue a nuclear
export permit to India as soon as possible.
"Furthermore, he acknowledged frankly that India has a
civil nuclear power market of more than 100 billion US dollars
and, once the ban is lifted, British business is expected to
win huge amounts of orders," it said.
On UK-India defence ties, it said "India is well-known
for relying on foreign in particular Russian military
equipment and technology to modernise its military forces.
In recent years, India has reportedly stepped up its
pace to diversify its weapon supply channels and the potential
for the diversification of its defence market is immense.
"And Britain has a certain appeal in this regard. So,
Prime Minister Cameron's trip to India opens the door for
British arms manufacturers to expand their weaponry exports to
India," it said.
PTI
First Published: Friday, July 30, 2010, 21:26