EAM Jaishankar: Let Iranian ship dock on humanitarian grounds

NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar said Saturday that India's "unstoppable" rise would be determined by India alone and not by the mistakes of others.

The minister was speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, where US deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau had said earlier that Washington wouldn't allow India to become big or powerful enough to rival the US by making the mistakes that it did with China.


Jaishankar also officially confirmed India had approved the docking of an Iranian ship, IRIS LAVAN, in Kochi on humanitarian grounds days before another Iranian warship, DENA, was torpedoed and sunk by a US submarine on March 4.

LAVAN had requested urgent docking in Kochi over technical issues it was facing on Feb 28, the day the war in West Asia started, and the request was acceded to by Indian authorities the next day.

Jaishankar: India’s rise will be determined by India alone

The minister said that India's rise is going to be unstoppable. "When we speak today about the rise of countries, the rise of countries is determined by the countries. The rise of India will be determined by India," Jaishankar said during an interactive session.

"It will be determined by our strength, not by the mistakes of others," he added, without naming any country.

Speaking about the significance of India's role in the Indian Ocean, the minister also said that those who work with India obviously will get more benefits. "I'm not saying there are no challenges to India's rise; there are. But the direction of India's rise is very clear. In a way, it's unstoppable," he said.

Asked about India's role in the region as a security provider in light of the DENA sinking, Jaishankar said that it's important to understand the reality of the Indian Ocean and underlined the presence of other countries including the US and China in the region.

"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," said the minister.

Talking about IRIS LAVAN, Jaishankar said that India had received a request from the ship that it wanted to come in at an Indian port because it said it was having problems. The ship docked in Kochi with 183 crew members who remain in India.

"On March 1, 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," said Jaishankar, adding India was guided by humanitarian concerns.

"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," added the minister.

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