UK defence secretary meets Indian security top brass

To provide impetus to defence relations with India, United Kingdom's defence secretary Liam Fox today met his counterpart AK Antony in New Delhi and discussed regional security, military cooperation and joint training drills.

The security situation in South Asia and also the bilateral visits planned for the next six months came up for discussions between Fox and Antony, defence ministry officials said.

This is the first visit to India by a serving UK secretary of state for defence since 2005.

Fox, who arrived in New Delhi yesterday, also met other Union ministers and senior national security officials.

In their joint statement of July 29 this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his British counterpart David Cameron had welcomed "the development of broad-based UK-Indian co-operation in the defence sector."

Fox's visit represented the next stage in taking this forward, a release by British high commission in India said.

India and Britain share long-standing defence relations with the latter selling important military equipment including an aircraft carrier, Jaguar fighter jets, Sea Harrier naval fighter aircraft and Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers to India.

Eurofighter Typhoon, an European consortium EADS' fighter jet in which Britain is a partner, is currently competing in the $11 billion Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tenders that the IAF had floated in 2007 and a decision on the deal is expected in another six months.

Eurofighter Typhoon is competing with American Lockheed Martin's F-16 and Boeing's F/A-18, Russian MiG-RAC's MiG-35, French D'Assault's Rafale and Swedish SAAB's Gripen aircraft in the MMRCA tenders described as 'mother of all deals'.