Antony to visit Oz for first time to boost military ties

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Antony to visit Oz for first time to boost military ties

NEW DELHI: With India and Australia slowly cranking up their strategic partnership, defence minister A K Antony is now all set for his first-ever visit to Canberra to bolster bilateral ties in maritime security, counter-terrorism, military exchanges and joint exercises.

Defence ministry sources say Antony, accompanied by a top-level delegation, will be leaving for Australia on June 3 with a brief stopover in Singapore. The visit comes at a time when the two nations are holding preliminary deliberations on a safeguards agreement to facilitate supply of Australian uranium to Indian civil nuclear plants.

India, however, has rejected feelers for forging a quadrilateral security cooperation pact with Australia, US and Japan in the Asia-Pacific, neither does it want to be the ``linchpin'' in the impending American ``pivot'' to the region.

India is certainly building concrete defence ties with all the three ``on a one-to-one basis'' but remains averse to joining any multi-lateral security construct that could be seen as an axis to ``contain'' China. In fact, after China protested against the Indo-US `Malabar' naval exercise in Bay of Bengal in 2007 after it was expanded to include Australian, Japanese and Singaporean navies as well, India has largely restricted the exercise to a bilateral level.

But India and Australia are now planning to institutionalize a regular bilateral naval combat exercise to build ``interoperability'' between the two forces. ``The agenda is still being fine-tuned. Antony will discuss with his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith various steps to enhance defence cooperation. With the Indian Ocean region (IOR) being of critical concern for both, maritime security is a major thrust area,'' said a source.

Incidentally, an Australian warship, Adelaide-class frigate HMAS Newcastle, berthed at Kochi on Wednesday and will hold ``a basic maneuvering exercise'' with Indian warship INS Sharda while leaving on Friday.

Australia, in its recently-released ``Defence White Paper'', has underlined the importance of its partnership with India, describing it as an emerging ``global player'' in the ``Indo-Pacific strategic arc''.

``As India's economy grows and its trade interests expand, it is likely to develop and modernize its power projection capabilities. Over time, India will become a very important partner in building security in IOR and the broader Indo-Pacific region,'' it says. This outreach is in marked departure from Australia's earlier stance of being suspicious about India's growing military prowess.

While Antony will be going for the three-day trip to Australia, he will give a miss to the Shangri La Dialogue, the annual security forum of 28 Asia-Pacific states in Singapore, from May 31. Navy chief Admiral D K Joshi will represent India at the summit.

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