There is no tension between India and China and recent efforts to intensify engagement between the two sides is “a big change,” Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday as the Naval Commanders’ Conference kicked off in the national capital.
Ms. Sitharaman, who inaugurated the conference being held from May 8 to 11, said, “We are talking and meeting each other. That is a big change.” However, she parried questions about Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean region (IOR), such as a deep-sea port at Gwadar, Pakistan and other locations.
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Force to reckon with
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Asserting that the “Navy will be a force to reckon with in the Indo-Pacific region,” she said she had very “pointed discussion on the issues raised by the commanders.”
A Navy statement said the Minister expressed “satisfaction with which the Navy has continued to maintain a high operational tempo through regular deployment of ships, submarines and aircraft in the Areas Of Responsibility (AOR).” “I am confident that the Navy’s Maritime Domain Awareness in our Areas of Interests will enable it to respond effectively to the various contingencies, such as Search and Rescue, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) and anti-piracy,” she said.
She highlighted the Indian Navy’s responses to numerous crisis situations around the IOR in the last few months, including the heavy rains and flooding in Sri Lanka and post Cyclone Mora in Bangladesh and Myanmar, as well as Cyclone Ockhi in November.
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The Minister said the Navy had also established itself as a potential tool for military diplomacy, pointing out that they had been playing an important role in “furthering our national and foreign policy objectives through active cooperation and engagement with not just IOR littorals, but maritime nations across the globe.”
“I firmly believe that as a nation we cannot be truly self-reliant until we are able to develop our own weapons and sensors,” she said, complimenting the Navy for its pioneering efforts.