Venkaiah Naidu at an exhibition in Gaborone, Botswana. (PTI)
Training teams of the Indian Army and Indian Air Force may soon be brought back to Botswana to train members of the Botswana Defence Force. The possibility of bringing back the training teams was discussed during a one-on-one discussion held in Gaborone on Thursday between Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu and Vice-President of Botswana Slumber Tsogwane, according to Secretary (Economic Relations), Ministry of External Affairs, T S Tirumurti. The discussion between the two vice-presidents was followed by delegation-level talks between the two nations.
India had training teams in Botswana between 1978 and 2012. In fact, Tirumurti said that India was the “very first country” that Botswana had approached just a year after they set up the Botswana Defence Force. In 2014, a memorandum of understanding was signed to bring the Indian teams back to the African nation, and now “we are in the process of negotiating some of the changes which need to be incorporated” in the MoU, he said.
Tirumurti mentioned that Naidu “proposed” a solution to send the training teams under the Indian Technical and Economic…
