Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, November 25
India aims to conduct a unique naval exercise for which an invitation has been extended to 41 countries who are otherwise unlikely partners.
“The Naval Exercise ‘MILAN 2020’ is scheduled to be held at Visakhapatnam in March 2020 in which 41 countries have been invited,” the Ministry of Defence said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Among those invited are the US and Russia which otherwise don’t see much in common and are at loggerheads. Since 2018 the US has brought in Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) that requires imposing curbs on nations that have “significant” defence relations with Russia.
India is one of the countries that faces a threat of sanctions since it purchased S-400 missiles from Russia despite US pressure to not do so.
Among the invitees are the navies of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. The Saudis have been accusing Iran of having masterminded the attack on ARAMCO, its crude oil processing units. Israel has edgy relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Also on the invite list are those countries which are locked in dispute over territorial boundaries in the South China Sea. The invitees include Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines — all are locked in framing a “code of conduct” on navy and cargo operating in the South China Sea.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh while addressing the Sixth ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM Plus) in Bangkok on November 18 said interest of countries like India, which are not part of the negotiations for the code of conduct, should be protected.
China, which has lost its argument at the UN on defining territorial waters under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), has refused to accept the verdict. It has opened own negotiations to establish a “code of conduct” in the hydro-carbon rich sea.
Among others on the invite list are Japan and Australia, who are part of the four-nations grouping the ‘Quadrilateral’ along with India and US. New Zealand, UAE, Singapore, UK, Bangladesh, France, Kuwait and Myanmar are others.
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