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Port Blair, March 24 - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas are suspected to be running weapons from Thailand but no seizures have been made so far, a senior Indian military officer said Saturday.
He also discounted reports that China had established a listening post on Myanmar's Coco Island, located to the north of the strategic Andaman and Nicobar Islands chain in the Indian Ocean.
'There have been reports that LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) has been smuggling guns from Thailand but no one has been caught,' said Rear Admiral P.K. Nair, deputy head of the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), India's southernmost military base located here. He declined to elaborate.
Nair was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a military exercise staged to demonstrate to Defence Minister A.K. Antony the assets and capabilities of ANC, India's only tri-services command that has under its wing elements from the army, navy and air force as also the Coast Guard.
Speaking about the Coco Islands that lie some 40 km to the north of the Andamans, Nair said Indian naval ships paid regular visits to the area to return Myanmarese fishermen caught poaching in Indian waters.
'After we catch the fishermen, they serve their jail terms and our vessels make regular visit to the Coco Islands to return them home. So we are aware of what's going on there,' Nair maintained.
Hitherto, the ANC's primary role has been to guard the six degree channel at the southern edge of the Andaman chain that leads to the Straits of Mallaca, the world's busiest waterway through which some 70,000 ships transit every year.
It is now gearing to take on an energy security role as it focuses on the huge 30 percent segment of India's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that lies within its area of responsibility.
Toward this, it envisages shoring up its force levels with the possible permanent deployment of fighter aircraft and creating facilities for berthing large naval vessels.
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