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India and Indonesia will hold the seventh Joint Defence Cooperation Committee (JDCC) meeting in the national capital on Friday.
The meeting will be co-chaired by Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane and Secretary General of the Ministry of Defence, Indonesia Air Marshal (Retd.) Donny Ermawan Taufanto, MDS. Both sides will exchange views on regional and global issues of shared interest. Indonesian Secretary-General, who is on a visit to India for two days from May 2 will also undertake discussions with Indian Defence Industries in New Delhi and Pune. The India-Indonesia friendship, which was elevated to the level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2018, has widened the scope of bilateral relations to allow for new collaboration in the realm of defence industry, science and technology. "The defence relations form a significant pillar of this growing partnership," the Ministry of Defence said in a statement. Moreover, defence engagements between the two countries have diversified to include wide-ranging contacts between the services, military-to-military exchanges, high-level visits, capacity building and training programmes, cooperation in UN peacekeeping, ship visits and bilateral exercises. The defence cooperation agreement signed in 2001 between India and Indonesia set forth the establishment of the JDCC to explore and identify potential areas of cooperation, and matters of common interest, initiate, coordinate, monitor and control the approved cooperative activities. India and Indonesia have shared two millennia of close cultural and commercial contacts. The shared culture, colonial history and post-independence goals of political sovereignty, economic self-sufficiency and independent foreign policy have a unifying effect on the bilateral relations, the Ministry of External Affairs stated. Moreover, since the adoption of India's 'Look East Policy' in 1991, there has been a rapid development of bilateral relations in political, security, defence, commercial and cultural fields. (ANI)
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