New Delhi
11 July 2007
India and Australia will participate in a joint naval exercise in the
Bay of Bengal in September this year, visiting Australian Defence Minister Brendan
Nelson said.
The navies of the United States, Japan and Singapore will participate in this exercise
too, he told reporters after meeting with Minister of Defence AK Antony. Mr Nelson also
held talks with Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee and National Security
Adviser MK Narayanan. He will travel to Chennai before flying to Singapore.
"What we probably want to do as we go forward into the future is to develop exercises in
a number of areas which are appropriate to our joint relationship and our mutual
interests and naval exercises and naval engagement is arguably the most important,"
he said.
He said that India has experience of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency and
peacekeeping. "It is common for navies to conduct exercise and have exchanges [but]
Australia has not participated in this before," he said, referring to the five-nation joint
naval exercises planned for September.
The Australian defence minister clarified that the "suggestion" to extend the trilateral
cooperation among the US, Japan and Australia, to include India, was welcome but
defence and security matters would be kept out of its ambit for now.
Mr Nelson said, "Australia's position is that whilst we are prepared to have a discussion
on trade, economy, culture and other issues, our officials have already had a meeting on
the margins of the ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) meeting in Manila in May, we do not
wish to have a formal quadrilateral strategic dialogue in defence and security matters."
He went on to observe, "We believe that the matters that we do wish to and want to
discuss with India we do so very capably in bilateral arrangement and [there are]
multilateral arrangements which currently exist [which we are] satisfied with."
"We also want to make sure that we don't detract from the importance of the trilateral
strategic dialogue and further than that, we don't want to do something which is not
necessary which might otherwise cause concern in other coungtries particularly in China
and I have also reassured the Chinese that Australia is not seeking a quadrilateral
strategic dialogue on core security and defence issues," he added. Mr Nelson reached
New Delhi from Beijing.
The Australian minister explained that Australia and Japan have an alliance with the US
and they have agreed on a trilateral strategic dialogue based on their common security
interests in the region particularly North-East Asia.
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