• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Multi-nation naval exercise as per schedule: Navy chief

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New Delhi, Aug 23, IRNA
India-US-Naval Exercise
With the Left parties deciding to stage protest in major eastern coastal towns against the five-nation Malabar naval exercise, the Government on Thursday said the planned exercise in the Bay of Bengal will held as per schedule.

"It (Malabar Exercise) is on," Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said of the exercise slated for September four.

Twenty four warships from India, the US, Singapore, Australia and Japan are taking part in the naval exercise. The warships include US nuclear carrier and nuclear powered submarine. Mehta said Armed forces are completely apolitical and work in national interests.

"Indian Navy stands to benefit a lot from exercises that we do with various navies, including the US navy. "It is a quite experience if you have 40 different types of aircraft operating in an environment...

ships to go...get battle ready. I don't think we can have such an environment with other countries," Mehta said.

Asked about the Left parties opposition to the defence exercise with the US, he said it was in the interest of national security that the Indian navy engages navies of different countries across the world.

Mehta said the country's naval forces conducted similar exercises with the navies of Britain, France, Russia, Sri Lanka and China.

"We have worked with Chinese Navy in March this year. We did some work basically in search and rescue aspects, the common thing we do to start with such exercises. And from there onwards, we graduate to major exercises," he said.

Indian Left parties are gearing up for a major protest against India's multilateral naval exercise with the US in the Bay of Bengal on September four.

The protest will be registered by flagging off two 'jathas'(groups) one from Chennai by CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) General Secretary Prakash Karat and another from Kolkata by party patriarch Jyoti Basu.

Veteran Forward Bloc leader Ashok Ghosh said the Left Front will organize rallies across West Bengal next month to highlight the "dangerous implications" of the draft 123 agreement for nuclear cooperation with the US and to oppose the multilateral exercise in the Bay of Bengal.

"The government enjoys the support of the Left. It is regrettable that such a government enters into a strategic pact with imperialist America," he said.

Ghosh said the protests would be endorsed at the Left Front meeting in Kolkata on August 24.

2160/1430/1412