Seeking to enhance its influence in the Indian Ocean Region, India today said it has put in place a system along with Sri Lanka and Maldives to keep an eye on the activities there and work together for enhancing maritime security.

“We have a platform in place which will enhance concrete response to situation whether it is piracy, counter terrorism, drug trafficking or human trafficking... We will pool our capability. This is useful and wanted to join forward,” India’s National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon told reporters.

“We can put in place systems so that we can see and share what we see what is going on in the maritime area around us. We have trained our people. We have put in hardware so that we can share that information,” he said.

He was briefing on the third NSA-level Meeting on Maritime Security Cooperation between Maldives, Sri Lanka and India held in New Delhi.

The NSA said while assessing the cooperation and joint activities in field of counter-terrorism, anti-piracy and trafficking, the three sides were satisfied with the work in progress.

Menon said the three sides have also held a trilateral exercise called ‘Dosti’ also in the recent past.

At the meeting, the Maldivian delegation was led by its Defence Minister Col (Retd) Mohamed Nazim while the Sri Lankan side was represented by its Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

On the part of the new platform, the three countries will share data of the newly-developed Automatic Identification System, which has been built by India for enhancing coastal security.

Menon said the three countries had invited Mauritius and the Seychelles as observer countries for this meeting and they have shown interest in participate in it and “we may have to change the name of the meeting”. - PTI