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‘India will not be seen as a responsible country if…’: S Jaishankar on Navy's anti-piracy ops in Arabian Sea
As a result of its actions, India, the external affairs minister said, is now looked at ‘much more warmly.’
Talking about the recent anti-piracy operations carried out by the Indian Navy in the Arabian Sea, including its rescue of two Iranian-flagged vessels from pirates in a span of 24 hours, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Monday that India will not be considered a ‘responsible country’ if ‘bad things’ were happening in its neighbourhood.
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“If you look, even in the last few days, actually one of our ships extinguished a fire and rescued the crew of a tanker, which had taken a drone today. It rescued Pakistani and Iranian fishermen from pirates. I feel today that India's greater capability, our own influence and our reputation today warrant that we actually help out in difficult situations. Believe me, people look at us much more warmly, and much more friendly as a result of what we do now,” news agency ANI quoted Jaishankar as saying.
The minister continued: “The Indian Navy has deployed 10 ships in that region (Arabian Sea) because we got a double problem.: we got a piracy problem, and we have got a missile drone problem.”
In the past two days, INS Sumitra, the Navy's offshore patrol vessel, rescued as many as 36 crew members from the two vessels; in the second of those operations, carried out on Tuesday, the 19 rescued members were all Pakistani nationals.
Also Read: Indian Navy is aggressively going after piracy: Admiral Hari Kumar
Since the beginning of the year, the Indian armed forces' naval arm has been involved in multiple anti-piracy missions in the region, including one on January 5, when its elite MARCOS commandos rescued 21 crew members, including 15 Indians, from a Liberian-flagged carrier in the North Arabian Sea.
