India allowed Iranian ship to dock in Kochi on humanitarian grounds: Jaishankar
According to the Indian foreign minister, Iranian ships were coming in for a fleet review and “then they got in a way caught on the wrong side of events."
In his first reaction to the sinking of the Iranian warship IRIS Dena and India allowing the docking of another Iranian navy ship IRIS Lavan, India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar today (7 March) said he supports the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and international law.
Taking part in an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, he said IRIS Lavan was allowed to dock in Kochi, Kerala, on humanitarian grounds.
"I too support UNCLOS and international law... We got a message from the Iranian side that one of the ships, which presumably was closest to our borders at that point of time, wanted to come into our port. They were reporting that they were having problems," Jaishankar said.
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"And so, my recollection is this was on 28 February and on 1 March, we said, 'Okay, you can come in.' And it took them a few days to sail in and then they docked in Kochi. And the ship is there.
"And obviously, the people on the ship, a lot of them were young cadets, that is my understanding. They have disembarked; they are, you know, in a nearby facility... When they set out and came here, the situation was totally different," he said.
According to the Indian foreign minister, the Iranian ships were coming in for a fleet review and "then they got in a way caught on the wrong side of events... One obviously had a similar situation in Sri Lanka, they took the decision which they made and one of them unfortunately didn't make it... We approached the situation from the point of view of humanity, other than whatever the legal issues were and I think we did the right thing."
A total of 87 people were killed when a US submarine sank IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka on 4 March.
