New Delhi, Oct. 17: Russia has urged India to sign an intellectual property rights (IPR) agreement that will ensure secrecy of information and enable big-ticket procurement for the Indian armed forces.

The IPR agreement was suggested last year and Delhi and Moscow are negotiating the fine print and some headway is likely during the visit of defence minister Pranab Mukherjee to Russia next month.

Russia is the largest supplier of military hardware to India.

Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov met his Indian counterpart today even as the armed forces of the two countries were conducting joint exercises off Visakhapatnam and in Rajasthan.

An official statement issued here said: “Both leaders reiterated their desire to consolidate and enhance their strategic defence.”

Ivanov invited Mukherjee to visit Russia in November for the next meeting of the India-Russia inter-governmental commission on military and technical cooperation.

Ivanov also met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Ivanov was scheduled to visit Visakhapatnam along with his delegation to witness the joint naval exercise but the visit was cancelled because of heavy rain and flooding in the port city. He returned to Russia later.