New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, on Saturday, explained why India allowed an Iranian warship to dock in Kochi in Kerala and the country’s stand on the sinking of another off the Sri Lankan Coast, amid the escalating conflict in West Asia.
Saying the ships had been ‘caught on the wrong side of events’, Jaishankar described how India received a request from Iran for one of its naval vessels that had reported technical problems, while speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi.
“I too support the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and international law… We got a message from the Iranian side that one of the ships, which presumably was closest to our borders at that point of time, wanted to come into our port. They were reporting that they were having problems… On the 1st March, we said you can come in and it took them a few days to sail in and then they docked in Kochi… There were a lot of young cadets… When the ships had set out and when they came
here, the situation was totally different… They were coming in for a fleet review and then they got in a way caught on the wrong side of events…,” the EAM said.
“One obviously had a similar situation in Sri Lanka, they took the decision which they did and one of them unfortunately didn’t make it… We approached the situation from the point of view of humanity, other than whatever the legal issues were and I think we did the right thing…,” Jaishankar added.
He spoke on chatter on social media about how much control India has over the Indian Ocean region.
“There are a lot of social media debates going on over this…. Please understand the reality of the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia has been in the Indian Ocean for the last five decades…The fact that there are foreign forces based in Djibouti happened in the early first decade of this century. Hambantota came up during this period…,” he said.
His statement comes at a time when there is debate on whether India could have prevented the sinking of the IRIS Dena by an US submarine. The Iranian warship was returning after participating in the International Fleet Review and Exercise Milan hosted by the Indian Navy at Visakhapatnam.
India has made it very clear that it had no role to play in providing security to the ship once it was international waters, particularly at a time when hostilities are on between Iran and the US.