India keeps Pakistan out of 10-year celebration of naval symposium

India has kept Pakistan out of the celebrations in Kochi meant to mark 10 years of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), which is described by India as the 21st century’s first significant international maritime security initiative launched in February 2008.

While Pakistan is one of the 24 member of IONS, it wasn't invited by the Indian government to participate in the programme. The IONS has 24 members and 8 other navies which act as observers.

While the government is willing to address all humanitarian issues with Pakistan, it remains reluctant to engage Pakistan politically. The 2 countries are still smarting under the recent discord which saw India cancelling a meeting between the foreign ministers 24 hours after it was announced.


The IONS provides a forum for discussion of regional maritime issues and promotes friendly relationships among member nations. The ongoing IONS event aims to discuss maritime issues "pertaining to cooperative capacity-building to deal with common security concerns in the region" .

"The IONS initiative endeavours to generate a flow of information among naval professionals so as to enable a common understanding of regional maritime issues and in turn facilitate generation of mutually-beneficial maritime security outcomes," the Indian Navy said in a release on Monday.

The theme for this year's seminar is "IONS as a Catalyst for SAGAR" which stands for Security and Growth for All in the Region.

Pakistan is said to have taken up what it has described as "precedence of selective invitations to members of International bodies to erode the spirit of the forum".

As a part of IONS, the navy is expected to soon put into operation the Information Fusion Centre for Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) to improve maritime security in the region. All members of IONS are expected to be part of it. "We have the approval from the Government of India to get in touch with a number of nations on technical agreement on exchanging information on white-shipping," navy chief Sunil Lanba was quoted as having said in Kochi.