France and India

French President Jacques Chirac is in India today for a two-day visit. The visit reflects India's growing importance. Europe wants to maintain ties to the Asian subcontinent as India's economic might grows, as well as its strategic influence in the region. The visit takes on added importance President Bush will be visiting India in a couple of weeks.

Indian officials have complained that Europe has been slow to recast India as a major power, seeing it instead in purely commercial terms as a lesser China. At the same time, the United States and Japan, among others, have sent the message that they see India as a bulwark against China and that they need India at least as much as it needs them.

"France has to recognize that the center of gravity is shifting from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean," Kamal Nath, the Indian commerce minister, said in a telephone interview. "America was the quickest to see that India is the fastest-growing free-market economy in the world. Europe is now catching up."

In planning his trip, however, Mr. Chirac has ensured that the United States will be playing catch-up in at least one way: his delegation, including five cabinet ministers and 32 business and industrial leaders, will get here two weeks before a visit by President Bush.

Under Mr. Chirac, France has been a champion of improving ties between India and Europe, and it was an early backer of India's bid for a United Nations Security Council seat. And France has fostered a strategic relationship between the two nations since Mr. Chirac's first state visit to India in 1998.

"It was true a few years back that the French were a bit standoffish. Now it's changed completely," Dominique Girard, the French ambassador to India, said in an interview.

Trade, as usual, is a driving concern in the relationship. France is looking to India as a potential export market to help its sluggish economy.

Part of the visit includes a desire to drum up arms business. India is shopping around for a large buy of warplanes, as Security Watchtower pointed out here.

In New Delhi, he was meeting with business leaders Sunday before a private dinner with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The weapons market remains a key part of Franco-Indian relations.

While India traditionally buys many of its weapons from France and Russia, the United States is also honing in on the lucrative market, and President Bush arrives in India for a visit in two weeks. Though he denied there was any competition with the U.S. president, Chirac said France has a position "that naturally must be hers in India."

Chirac will also press India to buy French Mirage fighter jets. India is looking to buy 126 new warplanes in a deal worth billions of dollars, but is also considering American F-16s and F/A-18 Super Hornets, Swedish Gripens and Russian MiGs.

A subtext to the visit involved an aging toxic aircraft carrier France was sending to India to be dismantled. However, protests from environmental groups, as well as the unseemly image of a Western power dumping its garbage on a developing nation led to the decision to turn the ship around.

The French leader narrowly sidestepped having the visit overshadowed by a decommissioned French aircraft carrier containing toxic chemicals. The asbestos-carrying Clemenceau had been en route to India to be dismantled when Chirac ordered it back to France on Wednesday after protests from French and Indian environmental groups and trade unions.

Chirac's visit will also include signing a deal for cooperation on nuclear power. This is an attempt to draw India away from the US, as the US-India nuclear deal has yet to get through Congress, with some questioning the wisdom of the deal. France sees an opening to give India another option for help on its civilian nuclear program.

Chirac is a weasel, and while India certainly has reason to be interested in European markets, India should be careful about tying itself too closely to such a weak country.