Warships from countries including China and Britain along with
host Pakistan gathered for a naval exercise yesterday designed to
boost international anti-maritime terrorism efforts, the Pakistani
navy said.
27 countries, including rivals US and Iran are taking part in
the weeklong "Aman 07" exercise centered on Karachi, Pakistan's
main port on the Arabian Sea and its principal naval base.
In the primary "harbor phase," a range of conferences will allow
naval officers to exchange information on their respective forces’
capabilities, navy spokesman Lieutenant Commander Salman Ali said,
adding that exercises at sea would begin tomorrow.
Britain, France, China, Malaysia and Bangladesh have already
sent ships to Karachi for the war games while naval forces and
observers from Italy, Turkey, Iran and the US among others were
awaited yesterday.
Yesterday's exercise began shortly after 17 people, including 12
Al-Qaida-linked Uzbeks, were reported killed in a rare clash
between militants and tribesmen in a Pakistani region seen as
harboring militant fighters.
Three Pakistani tribesmen and two Afghan refugees were also
among the dead following a battle in Azam Warsak, a village in the
South Waziristan region of Pakistan near the Afghan border.
Hundreds of foreign militants, mainly Uzbeks, Chechens and
Arabs, are holed up in Waziristan and other Pakistani tribal areas
after fleeing Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban in late
2001.
(China Daily March 7, 2007)
