India asks Netherlands not to supply weapons to Pakistan

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Netherlands counterpart Ruben Brekelmans met in New Delhi on Tuesday.

The two leaders discussed a range of topics including elevating the bilateral cooperation in areas like defence, security, information exchanges, Indo-Pacific and new and emerging technologies, said a defence ministry statement.

It said both Singh and Brekelmans explored the possibilities of collaboration in shipbuilding, equipment and space sectors, optimising the complementariness in skills, technology and scale of the two countries.

They also discussed working together in domains like Artificial Intelligence and related technologies, besides connecting the respective defence technology research institutes and organisations.

Meanwhile, reports claimed that Singh urged his Dutch counterpart to not supply arms, weapon systems, platforms and military technologies to Pakistan.

“Singh said India has been fighting Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in J&K and elsewhere for decades. India tells all friendly countries that they should not arm Pakistan in any way due to its state policy of fueling terrorism in other countries,” the Times of India quoted a source as saying.

The Netherlands had supplied two Alkmaar-class mine countermeasures vessels to Pakistan.

After the meeting, Singh said in a post on X that both India and the Netherlands  looked forward to "further deepen and elevate" the bilateral defence partnership.

"Delighted to meet the young and dynamic Defence Minister of Netherlands, Mr. Ruben Berkelmans in New Delhi. We reviewed the full range of India-Netherlands defence cooperation. We look forward to further deepen and elevate our defence partnership. The areas of our discussion included defence, cyber security, Indo-Pacific and emerging technologies like AI," he said.