Will Indians Ever Buy Russian Aircraft-Carrier "Admiral Gorshkov"?

Will Indians buy Russian Aircraft-carrier "Admiral Gorshkov"?
On November 11, 2003 Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia. Their meeting is of major importance for Russian shipbuilders. During an unofficial meeting, both leaders plan to reach mutual agreement concerning Russia's transfer of its aircraft-carrier "Admiral Gorshkov" to India. The aircraft-carrier has been awaiting its hour for many years while being moored at one of the military wharfs of "SevMash" production facility.
Among those purely "technical" aspects, there also exist several "political" ones prepared for discussion between the two leaders. However, it appears that those will be mainly "political" aspects playing crucial role in deciding "Admiral-Gorshkov's" destiny.
According to the information from several Internet Agencies, Putin's primary concern is to persuade India to change its discriminatory import politics towards Russia. Such strategy has been explicitly explained in a document addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation.
Papers collected specifically for India's Prime Minister contain the following thesis, "to be discussed at a meeting of top official level." Judging by the information obtained from Internet-mass media, this has been stated for a reason. Present-day India is second after EU in the amount of law suits aimed at Russia antidumping investigations. Experts have noted that the main reason for such high rate of law suites is due to the fact that India still has not accepted Russia as a country with developing market economy. As a result India refuses to consider Russia’s production priced and prefers to calculate prices using its own methods. What does it mean in reality? In the course of the initial talks about the aircraft-carrier "Admiral Gorshkov", India has made its own calculations according to its own methods, relying on their own sources of information and trusting their own experts. In the end, their offer varied greatly from ours. According to our experts, if Mr. Putin and Mr. Vajpayee finally reach consensus, "Admiral Gorshkov" will most likely be Indian.
However, there still remains a "political" aspect of the current negotiations. The aspect mainly concerns Europe than it does India. According to western media sources, India is thinking about purchasing American airplanes "Orion" for navy patrol. India motivates its actions in the following manner. It claims that Russia has persuaded India to purchase three "IL-38" airplanes in a single packet with "Admiral Gorshkov" as well as several seaborne airplanes "MIG-29K" and bombers. It turns out, that such information is an absolute lie. Russia has never even attempted to link its trade of its "IL-38's" with "Gorshkov". In addition, the fact that India is willing to purchase American "Orions" has nothing to do with IL-38's contract of acquisition.
As for the aircraft-carrier, certain actions have already been taken in regards to its acquisition. India plans to purchase the aircraft-carrier along with twelve seaborne airplanes. Everything seems to be working out well. The only remaining thing is for the both parties to reach consensus.   

Andrei Mikhailov
Pravda.Ru

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