India and china to participate in IMMSAREX.

TNPSC Current Affairs - August 2017 by TNPSC Guru.

Indian Navy will join the Chinese navy for an inaugural maritime search and rescue exercise of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) on November 2017. This year IONS was chaired by Bangladesh.

The inaugural International Maritime Search and Rescue Exercise (IMMSAREX) will be attended by ships and aircrafts of both members and observers of IONS

About IONS:

Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) is a regional forum which seeks to increase maritime cooperation among navies of the Indian Ocean littoral states by providing an open forum for discussing the maritime issues and also helps in enhancing regional maritime security.

IONS was launched by Indian on 2008. IONS will be represented by Navy chiefs of participating countries.

There are 35 members which are grouped into four sub regions

• India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Pakistan, Seychelles ,Sri Lanka  are comes under south Asian Littorals
• Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE ,Yemen  are comes under West Asian Littorals
• Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, France, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania are comes under East African Littorals
•  Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste  are comes under south East Asian and Australian littorals

Also few countries are in observer status like China and Japan.