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Indian Navy ships move closer to Lanka

George Iype in Cochin

India has moved a fleet of naval ships into the Indian Ocean to show operational readiness and perhaps carry out logistical supplies to the Sri Lankan forces trapped in Jaffna fighting a full-fledged battle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Code-named Operation Pasha, the naval exercise in collaboration with the Coast Guard is a limited maritime manoeuvre meant to boost the morale of the Sri Lankan forces fighting in Jaffna and to scan the coastline and waters in the area.

A detachment of naval aircraft is also involved in the exercise.

Official sources at the Southern Naval Command in Cochin said the ships have been mainly moved to strategic locales in the Indian Ocean from Cochin, Bombay and Visakhapatnam. Some frontline ships like landing-ship tanks, Kashin class destroyers and mine-sweepers have already been positioned along the coastline.

Last week, heavily armed Kashin class destroyers and Khanjar class corvettes had participated in the first ever calibrated show of strength along the East Coast that the Indian Navy has conducted since the war in Sri Lanka escalated.

"There is nothing unusual about these ships being moved and positioned. This is a routine military exercise in conflict zones to send an operational readiness message to the enemy, in this case to the LTTE," a top naval officer told rediff.com

He said a Tu-142M maritime aircraft has also been deployed to conduct reconnaissance of the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar, the Indian Ocean stretches closest to the Sri Lankan coast.

The official said that though the refugee flow from Jaffna to the Tamil Nadu coast is very low still, the ships will assist the maritime forces that are already involved in screening the Tamil refugees arriving mostly in boats to Mandapam in Tuticorin zone.

The navy and air force have been ordered "to be in full readiness", especially after the Sri Lankan Chief of Defence Staff General Rohan de Silva Daluvatte began a crucial visit to some southern cities on Wednesday.

General Daluvatte arrived in Madras on Wednesday for what defence officials say is a mission to chalk out the possibilities to ensure that the Indian Navy and IAF provide regular logistical and humanitarian assistance to the nearly 35,000 Sri Lankan Army personnel trapped in Jaffna.

He was to carry out a series of strategic talks with top Indian defence officials in Bangalore on Thursday and Friday.

Naval officials disclosed that General Daluvatte has come with an urgent mission with two goals. First, since the Indian government has declined to intervene in the civil war in Jaffna, General Daluvatte will discuss all other logistical support and indirect assistance that India could rush to the beleaguered Sri Lankan troops.

Second, he is likely to request the IAF's back-up protection and escort for the Sri Lankan Army's supplies to the troops in Jaffna. Which would mean IAF planes flying a few sorties over Jaffna daily.

Sources said that if India agrees to the general's second proposal, the IAF operations will be carried out from its bases in Trivandrum and Bangalore.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government has already pledged humanitarian assistance to the Sri Lankan forces. The southern commands of the IAF and the navy are in full preparation with planeloads of medicines and other emergency relief items like food and clothes to be sent to Jaffna as and when an emergency request comes from Colombo.

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