Sunday, December 4 2005 09:49 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Moscow: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is arriving here today (Dec 4,2005) on a three-day visit to cement Indo-Russian strategic partnership in defense, space and energy security in the backdrop of bilateral relations reaching an 'unprecedented level of intensity'.

"There is consensus on top political level that defense and military-technical cooperation is a vital component of our strategic partnership and both sides have expressed their intention to strengthen it," Indian Ambassador Kanwal Sibal said ahead of Tuesday's Kremlin summit between the PM and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Both leaders are expected to focus on defense and military-technical cooperation to resolutely move ahead from the buyer-seller relationship towards joint R&D, production and marketing of futuristic weapons platforms and force multipliers like fifth generation super fighter jets.

According to the Russian Vice premier and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, due to the 'highest level of mutual trust', India is the only country in the world with which Russia has a long-term military-technical cooperation programme till year 2010.

Besides signing a long-pending Intellectual Property Right (IPR) pact to remove all the bottlenecks in joint R&D in futuristic weapon systems and opening access for India to cutting-edge sensitive Russian technologies, the two sides are also to ink the agreement to amend the long-term military-technical programme till 2010.

There are about US$ 10 billion deals in the pipeline till year 2007 and more new deals to be concluded after it will go beyond year 2010, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said in Moscow during his recent visit to prepare the defense agenda for the summit.

The issues of Russia's assistance to sensitive indigenous defense programmes are also likely to be touched upon by Singh and Putin during their summit talks.

Energy, including civilian nuclear power would also be the key items of agenda. India has invested US$ 2.4 billion in Sakhalin-1 offshore oil and gas field and is looking for new opportunities for investment in the Russian hydrocarbons, including Sakhalin-3 bloc.

After breakthrough with the US over easing curbs on transfer of civilian nuclear technologies to India, Russia is now poised to build four more VVER-1000 atomic reactors at the Kudankulam atomic power plant in Tamil Nadu, where it is already building two such units of 1000 mw each.

Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar is accompanying the PM on his Moscow tour.