NEW DELHI. In first ever visit by a Moroccan Defence Minister, Head of Government in charge of the National Defence Administration, Government of the Kingdom of Morocco, Abdeltif Loudyi met Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi on September 25 and agreed to enhance bilateral cooperation in the field of defence and security between the two countries.

Moroccan Defence Minister is on a two day official visit to India.

During the meeting, both Ministers agreed to enhance bilateral cooperation in the field of defence and security. The Minister identified fields of Hydrography, Peacekeeping, Telemedicine, Information Technology and Communications as well as Counter Terrorism and Counter Insurgency as potential areas for bilateral engagement.

Cooperation on defence industry, including collaboration in Ship Building and manufacturing support were also discussed. Defence Minister Sitharaman invited the Moroccan Minister to attend Aero India 2019 to be held in Bengaluru in February 2019.

Two bilateral MoUs, (i) ‘Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Outer Space’ between ISRO and the Moroccan Centre of Remote Sensing and (ii) ‘Cooperation in the area of Cyber Security’ between the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT–IN), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Moroccan Computer Response Team (ma-CERT) were signed in the presence of Indian and the Moroccan Defence Minister.

The Moroccan delegation would also be visiting and interacting with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) facilities at Bengaluru as part of programme for the visit.