Navy chief calls for demarcation of waters

World | India

Littoral navies plan strategy to tackle problem

• IANS
• Published: 00:00 April 23, 2012

New Delhi: India has called for "clear demarcation" of the pirate-infested waters of the Indian Ocean to warn merchant vessels and the navies of the threat and to prevent incidents such as the killing of two Indian fishermen by Italian commandos guarding a cargo ship.
This demand was made by Indian Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma at the recent biennial Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) held in Cape Town, South Africa, where the issue of piracy which afflicts the Gulf of Aden was the key focus of discussions.
The IONS meeting, attended by 22 navies of the 35 littoral nations of the Indian Ocean, also decided to have common procedures for jointly fighting piracy in the region, apart from developing concepts for cooperative efforts at Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), according to Indian Navy's assistant chief (Foreign Cooperation and Intelligence) Rear Admiral Monty Khanna.
Apart from the naval and shipping aspect to Verma's demand for clear demarcation, a major area of concern for the trade via the sea, particularly for those in India, was the high premium they have to pay for insuring the goods passing through the Indian Ocean.

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Since Somali pirate activity was observed in eastern Arabian Sea in October-November 2010, the London-based maritime agencies designated the region as pirate-infested and hiked insurance premium for cargo vessels passing through the region.
However, the Indian Navy has pointed out that it has, apart from deploying a warship in Gulf of Aden since October 2007 to escort cargo ships, had increased its patrol of the eastern Arabian Sea from October 2010 and since then, there has been no pirate-related incident closer to the Indian sub-continent.
India, hence, wants the international agencies to rationalise the demarcation at regular intervals and tweak insurance premium for cargo ships passing through eastern Arabian sea. It also pointed out that the Italian commandos had fatally attacked the Indian fishermen in the eastern Arabian Sea, since they were still under the impression the area is infested by pirates, all due to irrationality of piracy notifications.
The IONS meet also wanted the littoral navies to evolve common strategies to tackle piracy in the Indian Ocean region.