India, US plan Arabian Sea war games

[Naveed Yaseen]

NEW DELHI (October 17 2008): The US navy's nuclear-powered super-carrier USS Ronald Reagan will sail into the Arabian Sea on Saturday for war games with India as part of warming ties between the two sides, officials said Thursday. A nuclear submarine and five other warships from the US Navy's Seventh Fleet will join the annual drills codenamed Malabar 08 off the western Indian resort of Goa, Indian navy spokesman Nirad Sinha said.

"Naval co-operation between India and the United States epitomises the relationship between two large and responsible maritime powers," he said, without saying how long the games would last. Fighter jets from the two sides will also join the mock combat drills, which officials from both sides said would be an exercise in "complex manoeuvres."

The exercises mark the first time that the USS Ronald Reagan will operate in Indian waters. The announcement of the drills comes less than a week after the United States and India signed a pact to open up sales of civilian nuclear technology to New Delhi for the first time in three decades.

The signature of the deal caps a three-year political rollercoaster in both countries for an agreement that lifts a ban on US-Indian civilian nuclear trade imposed after New Delhi's first nuclear test in 1974. The Malabar series is another signal of the new cordial relationship between the two countries, which were on opposite sides during the Cold War. The rapprochement has been keenly opposed by India's communists who see them as undermining New Delhi's traditional non-aligned foreign policy.

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