Washington, July 9 (ANI): The United States continues to remain optimistic and excited about furthering defence cooperation with India, notwithstanding Washington's failure to secure a deal to supply combat aircraft to New Delhi, a senior State Department official said.
Robert O. Blake, Jr.,Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, told Indian journalists during a web chat from Washington that his government still believed there is still a window open for a U.S. companies to reenter the MMRCA bidding process, as and when it reopened.
"We are not pressuring the Indian government in any way to try to reopen the bid. Certainly if, for their own reasons, they decide they need to reopen the bid, we would certainly welcome that opportunity and I'm sure our companies would welcome that opportunity," Blake said.
"We look forward with great interest to the huge number of other opportunities that will exist in the Indian defense market over the next several years. There's up to 30 billion dollars just in the next several years of potential contracts out there," he added.
"American companies are keenly interested in expanding their cooperation with Indian counterparts; in developing co-development, co-production types of activities; and again, expanding their presence in India. So this is going to be another exciting area of cooperation between our countries," Blake said.
He also said that Washington has lifted trade restrictions on Indian defense research establishments.
"Let me state categorically, those sanctions have been removed and were removed in February. The Commerce Department took the necessary action to do that, so those sanctions are no longer in place," Blake said. (ANI)
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