By IANS
New Delhi : The Indian and Australian navies are to participate in a multilateral maritime drill also involving the US, Japan and Singapore, and have agreed to launch a joint maritime initiative for the security of the Asia-Pacific region.
The drill does not signal a strategic quadrilateral alliance between India, Australia, Japan and the US, Australian Defence Minister Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said.
The joint exercise will be conducted later this year, it was announced here Wednesday after India and Australia inked a pact on information sharing to take forward the memorandum of understanding (MoU) they entered into last year to ramp up their defence cooperation.
"The information sharing agreement will see greater cooperation in the areas of maritime security, counter-terrorism and UN peacekeeping operations," Nelson said at a media briefing soon after the signing ceremony.
Expressing happiness over the signing of the pact, Defence Minister A.K. Antony hoped it would facilitate enhanced military-to-military cooperation between the two countries.
Indian Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt and his Australian counterpart Nick Warner signed the agreement after talks between their respective defence ministers.
Describing the agreement as a trust building measure, a defence ministry official said: "It would enable the protection of classified information exchanged in the process of implementing the MoU".
"In the recent past, there has been some distance between the two countries. The signing of the MoU (during Australian Prime Minister John Howard's visit here in 2006) signalled a thaw. With today's agreement, they are coming closer," the official explained, speaking on condition of anonymity.
On his part, Nelson said Australia considered relations with India "extremely important in the general sense and specifically in the defence and security spheres".
"We will now be seeing increasing exchanges between key military personnel as we increase our engagement as part of India's Look East policy," he added.
"India has an enormously well-trained navy and considerable experience with counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. We hope to benefit from this," the minister said.
Nelson also discounted apprehensions expressed by China that India, Australia, Japan and the US were in the process of formalising a quadrilateral strategic dialogue.
"We have engaged ourselves in trade, cultural and other issues. There is no intention to extend this to a quadrilateral strategic dialogue. We do not wish to have a formal quadrilateral strategic dialogue," he maintained.
The leaders of India, Australia, Japan and US had met in Manila in May on the sidelines of the ASEAN regional summit, a conclave China viewed as muscle flexing.
Beijing had also sought an explanation on the meeting from the four countries.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later spoke to Chinese President Hu Jintao to assure him the four nations were not engaged in a quadrilateral strategic dialogue.