PN will send warships to seas of Somalia to fight against pirates :Pakistani Defence Minister

Pakistan will soon send warships to seas of Somalia to fight against pirates in the area, Pakistani Defence Minister Chaudhary Ahmad Mukhtar said Wednesday. Mukhtar made the remarks when answering a question by Xinhua on the NASR auxiliary ship of the Pakistani navy, which is in the Arabian sea to review warships taking part of a multinational military exercise. "Yes. We're sending ships to Somali and we're planning that very shortly," the defence minister said. He said that the pirates were hijacking fuel-carrying vessels now and they might hijack any others. "I think the challenges are basically from the pirates.

The countries which are doing this exercise get together and relieve the people they are trying to hijack," he added. Some 20 warships and 19 aircraft participated Wednesday's fleet review. Together with Mukhtar at the fleet review are Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Noman Bashir, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Tariq Majid and other distinguished guests from countries which are either participants or observers to the AMAN 09 exercise. This is the second exercise in the AMAN series. The slogan of the exercise is "Together for Peace". The first series of AMAN exercises were held in March 2007 when14 ships belonging to Bangladesh, China, France, Italy, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United States navies took part.

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