Visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in New Delhi Sunday Russia hopes to take bilateral military-technical ties with India to a higher level and his country is ready to provide India with the latest weapons technology, Indo-Asian News Service reported.

Ivanov, who arrived here late Saturday on a four-day visit, said this would pave the way for the future transfer of military technology, according to the report.

Ivanov is here to witness the first India-Russian joint anti- terror war games being held in Rajasthan where over 1,600 elite Russian troops will be participating in the Indra-2005 military exercise.

During his stay, Ivanov will also witness the third of the series of joint India-Russian naval exercises at Visakhapatnam along with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee.

India and Russia conducted joint naval exercises Indra-2003 in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal two years ago, but this year's training has an anti-terror theme.

Ivanov has urged India to sign the agreement on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to take the bilateral military-technical cooperation involving sophisticated technologies to a qualitatively higher level, the report said.

Before his departure from Moscow, Ivanov said Russia and India had taken their long-standing defense cooperation from a " primitive buyer-seller" relation to joint research, design, development and production, in the thrust areas of cutting-edge technologies, it said.

"But to take this cooperation to a qualitatively higher level, in near future, it is very necessary to sign the IPR agreement," Ivanov was quoted as saying.

He did not rule out holding a joint anti-terror exercise involving Russia, India and China along with some other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at some point in the future, the report said. India had become an observer of SCO earlier this year.

Source: Xinhua