Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Sunday left for Israel on a five-day official visit to discuss avenues for enhancing bilateral defence relations.
His visit comes weeks after the India-Israel joint working group (JWG) on defence cooperation decided to set up a task force to put together a comprehensive 10-year roadmap to identify new areas of collaboration.
During the visit, he will be meeting the country’s senior military and civilian leadership where he will discuss avenues for further enhancing Indo-Israel defence relations.
The Army Chief will take forward the excellent bilateral defence cooperation between Israel and India through multiple meetings with senior officials of the security establishment and exchange views on various defence related issues. He will interact with the service chiefs and visit the headquarters of the Ground Forces element of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
The Indian Army in a Twitter post said: ‘General MM Naravane #COAS proceeded on a five-day visit to #Israel. The visit aims to further strengthen strategic defence cooperation between both countries.’ Before Naravane, several Indian representatives made high level visits to Israel in recent months. Indian External Affairs minister S Jaishankar was in Israel on a visit between 17-20 October, his first as foreign minister and also the first since the new Israeli government under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett took office in June.
Only recently, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval hosted Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan in New Delhi, in which heads of the National Security Councils of seven nations took part. It is good that India is reaching out to other countries to boost defence ties.