India gets set for French President Chirac's visit
by Ashok Dixit

     New Delhi: India is pulling out all stops to make French president Jacques Chirac's two-day visit to the country a significant one. Chirac and his wife Bernadette will arrive at the head of a high- profile delegation in the Indian capital on Sunday afternoon. He will spend the day interacting with French CEOs based in India, visit the French Embassy in the capital where he will address the French community before proceeding to attend a dinner hosted in his honour by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. On Monday, Chirac will be accorded a formal reception in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's official residence), where he will be received by President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and members of the Union Cabinet. After inspecting a guard of honour, the French President will proceed to Raj Ghat to offer his homage to Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi. Informed sources said that thereafter he would hold talks with Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. These meetings will be followed by one-to-one talks between Chirac and Prime Minister Singh and delegation-level talks at Hyderabad House.

   Several agreements and memoranda of understanding reflecting the wide range of Indo-French collaboration are expected to be signed during the delegation-level talks. These include a Declaration on development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; an Agreement on defence cooperation and an MoU on Tourism cooperation. ANTRIX (commercial arm of ISRO) will sign a contract with EADS Astrium to jointly build a satellite for Eutelsat. MoUs on cooperation between IIM Ahmedabad and ESSEC (Icole Supirieure des Sciences Iconomiques et Commerciales) and between BEE (Bureau of Energy Efficiency), Ministry of Power and AEDEME (Agence de l' Environnement et de la Mantrise de l' Energie) are also expected to be signed. India and France have a strategic partnership that was initiated in January 1998 during the visit of President Chirac to India. France is an important trade and investment partner of India. The two sides have agreed to make efforts to double the bilateral trade in five years from the present level of 3.5 billion. French FDI is about 760 million dollars from 1991 to date, of a total amount approved of 1.74 billion dollars. Indo-French cooperation ranges from high-technology areas like space, nuclear energy and defence to areas such as chemicals, infrastructure and food processing. The talks will be followed by a joint press conference and a working lunch. President Chirac will then deliver a keynote address at Vigyan Bhavan on the India-France Economic Partnership. Simultaneously, French CEOs will interact with their Indian counterparts. Chirac will then meet with the Leader of Opposition and senior BJP leader L.K.Advani before proceeding with his wife to meet President Kalam. He will then depart from India. An official spokesman said that the French President and his wife Bernadette are being being accompanied by French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, Defence Minister Michele Alliot, Economy, Finance and Industry Thierry Breton, Minister of State for Foreign Trade Christine Lagarde and Minister of State for Tourism Leon Bertrand, besides 30 senior French CEOs.

    Chirac's visit is a follow-up to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to France in September 2005, which reflected the commitment of both countries to "vigorously pursue their strategic partnership" by intensifying bilateral cooperation. This will be President Chirac's third visit to India. He came here as Prime Minister in 1976 and again as President in January 1998. On both occasions, he was the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade.

Sikhs to protest during Chirac's visit

     Ludhiana: Hundreds of Sikh schoolchildren will march in New Delhi on Monday during President Jacques Chirac's visit to protest against a ban on wearing turbans in French state schools, community leaders said here today. Chirac is due to arrive in New Delhi on Sunday and will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh, on Monday. "On this issue, we had pleaded our Prime Minister and he told us that the French president is coming and he will take up the matter with him. He has given us the assurance," said Avtar Singh, Chief of Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, an apex body of the community. France banned religious symbols such as Sikh turbans and Muslim headscarves in state schools in 2004 in a move aimed at checking what officials said was the rising influence of radical Islam among France's large Muslim population. It was widely condemned by Muslims and Sikhs and by some Western critics who found it too harsh. Sikhs have been opposing the French law ever since it was enacted two years ago. It banned the wearing of Jewish skullcaps, large Christian crosses, Islamic headscarves and Sikh turbans in schools.

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