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More Submarines, Jets for Indian Navy on Cards as Modi Visits France

A handout picture made available by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the SCO Summit via video conferencing, in New Delhi, India, 04 July 2023. EPA/INDIA PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU HANDOUT
A handout picture made available by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the SCO Summit via video conferencing, in New Delhi, India, 04 July 2023. EPA/INDIA PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU HANDOUT
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More Submarines, Jets for Indian Navy on Cards as Modi Visits France

A handout picture made available by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the SCO Summit via video conferencing, in New Delhi, India, 04 July 2023. EPA/INDIA PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU HANDOUT
A handout picture made available by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the SCO Summit via video conferencing, in New Delhi, India, 04 July 2023. EPA/INDIA PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU HANDOUT

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to France on Thursday to deepen ties with New Delhi's oldest strategic partner in the West, with a slew of high-profile defense deals expected and a new joint plan to ensure stability in the Indo-Pacific.
Modi has been invited as the guest of honor at the Bastille Day celebrations by French President Emmanuel Macron. Units from India's army, navy and air force will also participate in the parade, including two of the 36 Rafale fighter jets India bought in 2015 for nearly $9 billion.
The visit will "provide an opportunity to chart the course of the partnership for the future across diverse sectors such as strategic, cultural, scientific, academic and economic cooperation," the Indian government said in a statement on Wednesday.
This year marks 25th anniversary of the strategic partnership between the two countries, and the announcement of the new military deals will burnish the deepening defense ties between the two nations.
France has been one of India’s closest partners in Europe for decades. Paris was the only western capital to not impose sanctions on New Delhi after India conducted nuclear tests in 1998.
Ten years later, when India got Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver for its civil nuclear plans, France was the first country to sign an agreement.
India has relied on French fighter jets for four decades now. Much before buying Dassault Aviation's Rafale in 2015, India bought Mirage jets in the 1980s, which still comprise two squadrons of the air force.
In 2005, India bought six Scorpene-class diesel submarines from France for 188 billion rupees ($2.28 billion) to be built in India by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL) in partnership with the French Naval Group, the last of which will be commissioned next year.
The aging fleet of India's Russian-made platforms, Moscow’s inability to perform maintenance work, and delays in India's indigenous manufacturing plans for parallel platforms have necessitated the two new defense deals.
For submarines, India is expected to buy three more Scorpene submarines, which will again be made by MDL and the Naval group, government sources in New Delhi and Paris said. The price of the deals has yet to be agreed.
India is also expected to agree to buy 26 Rafale jets, the sources said, without giving the deal's expected value.
The marine version of Dassualt's Rafale jets, intended for India's first indigenous aircraft carrier commissioned in August 2022, outperformed the American SuperhornetF18s in tests last year for Indian requirements.
During the visit, Macron will host Modi for a private dinner, as well as a state banquet at the Louvre Museum. Modi will also meet other political leaders, selected French personalities and business leaders, and interact with the Indian diaspora.
Both India and France through its island territories have deep interests in the Indian Ocean and are concerned about China's growing assertiveness in the region. Details of an announcement on a plan for the region are not known.
The visit comes less than a month after President Joe Biden hosted Modi for a state visit, during which the US offered critical military technology including fighter jet engines and high altitude drones to India.
Last week Modi chaired an online meeting of leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Group members, which included Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping.
Macron, Biden, Putin and Xi, along with leaders of the other G20 member countries are expected to visit New Delhi in September for its summit to be hosted by India as its head this year.

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Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo
French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo
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Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo
French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party who tapped into blue-collar anger over immigration and globalisation and revelled in minimising the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally (Rassemblement National).
Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting - as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder in 1972 of the National Front, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly.

Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: his multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and condoning war crimes dogged the National Front, according to Reuters.
His declaration that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history and that the Nazi occupation of France was "not especially inhumane" were for many people repulsive.
"If you take a book of a thousand pages on World War Two, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail," Le Pen said in the late 1990s, doubling down on earlier remarks.
Those comments provoked outrage, including in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Commenting on Le Pen's death, President Emmanuel Macron said: "A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years, which is now a matter for history to judge."
Le Pen helped reset the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, harnessing discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.
He reached a presidential election run-off in 2002 but lost by a landslide to Jacques Chirac. Voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.
Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union, which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment felt by many Britons who later voted to leave the EU.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father's death during a layover in Kenya as she returned from the French overseas territory of Mayotte.
Born in Brittany in 1928, Jean-Marie Le Pen studied law in Paris in the early 1950s and had a reputation for rarely spending a night out on the town without a brawl. He joined the Foreign Legion as a paratrooper fighting in Indochina in 1953.
Le Pen campaigned to keep Algeria French, as an elected member of France's parliament and a soldier in the then French-run territory. He publicly justified the use of torture but denied using such practices himself.
After years on the periphery of French politics, his fortunes changed in 1977 when a millionaire backer bequeathed him a mansion outside Paris and 30 million francs, around 5 million euros ($5.2 million) in today's money.
The helped Le Pen further his political ambitions, despite being shunned by traditional parties.
"Lots of enemies, few friends and honor aplenty," he told a website linked to the far-right. He wrote in his memoir: "No regrets."
In 2011, Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by daughter Marine, who campaigned to shed the party's enduring image as antisemitic and rebrand it as a defender of the working class.
She has reached - and lost - two presidential election run-offs. Opinion polls make her the frontrunner in the next presidential election, due in 2027.
The rebranding did not sit well with her father, whose inflammatory statements and sniping forced her to expel him from the party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen described as a "betrayal" his daughter's decision to change the party's name in 2018 to National Rally, and said she should marry to lose her family name.
Their relationship remained difficult but he had warm words for her when Macron defeated her in 2022: "She did all she could, she did very well."