Elephants paraded in a red carpet greeting for French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday in India, where France is eyeing lucrative trade agreements with the fifth-largest economy in the world.
Macron will be invited to a dinner on Thursday night at the mansion of a 19th-century maharaja, and on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the main guest at a vibrant military parade that includes a fly-by of fighter jets, a massed column of tanks, and camel cavalry.
Human rights in India, disagreements over the conflict in Ukraine, and New Delhi’s strong connections with Moscow, its main military supplier, are among the issues that Western democracies are worried about. However, India is being courted by the US and its European allies as a military and economic counterbalance to China.
Following the Indian Defense Ministry’s multibillion-dollar acquisition of French-built Scorpene-class submarines and Rafale fighter planes, France intends to expand its military contracts.
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