NEW DELHI: India and Russia Thursday (Dec 2) announced they would hold their first-ever joint army exercise next year and increase their investment in a joint venture that makes the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.

Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov told a joint news conference here that the two sides had agreed to sign an agreement to protect intellectual property rights associated with Russian military technology transferred to India.

Ivanov said the two sides had transformed their long-standing military ties from a "buyer-seller relationship" into a strategic partnership to jointly develop hi-tech military hardware like the BrahMos that could be sold to other countries.

The two leaders were speaking after the conclusion of a two-day meeting of the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation.

Courtesy Indo-Asian News Service