I was not in charge when deal done, says Macron

I wasn’t in power when Rafale was inked, claims Macron

United Nations, Sept. 26: French President Emmanuel Macron has said that the Rafale deal was a “government-to-government” discussion and he was not in power when the multi-billion dollar agreement for 36 fighter jets was signed between India and France, as he distanced himself from the controversy.

Addressing a press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session, Macron was asked if the Indian government had at any point told France or Dassault — the French aerospace major — that they had to accept Reliance Defence as the Indian partner for the Rafale deal.

India had inked an intergovernmental agreement with France in September last year for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around `58,000 crore, nearly one- and-half years after PM Narendra Modi announced the proposal during a visit to Paris. The delivery of the jets is scheduled to begin from September 2019.

“I will be very clear. It was a government-to-government discussion and I just want to refer to what Prime Minister Modi very clearly said a few days ago,” Macron, who became French President in May last year, told reporters without elaborating.

“I don’t have any other comment. I was not in charge at that time and I know that we have very clear rules,” he said in his first comment on the issue. He added, “This one is very important to me because this is a strategic coalition and not just an industrial relation.”