A $20 million Dornier maritime surveillance plane from India, which will help in the fight against piracy, arrived at the Seychelles International Airport yesterday afternoon.

It will be armed and used by the Seychelles People’s Defence Forces (SPDF) for about 15 months while a similar one India promised Seychelles is being made.

At the airport to meet the plane were Minister for Home Affairs, Environment and Transport Joel Morgan, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Paul Adam, chief of defence forces Brigadier Leopold Payet, Indian high commissioner Asit Kumar Nag, chief of staff Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Roseline and principal secretary for Foreign Affairs Maurice Loustau-Lalanne.

Also there were other senior members of the SPDF and of the Indian armed forces.

Mr Morgan – who heads the High-Level Committee on Piracy – and Mr Adam said the arrival of the plane is another concrete example of the results Seychelles gets from its active diplomacy efforts led by President James Michel.

Mr Michel has been to India several times recently, and arrangements for the country to give Seychelles a Dornier plane and a helicopter were made after he met Indian leaders last year.

The talks were followed by the visit of Indian Defence Minister A K Antony, after which the order for the Dornier plane and helicopter was made, and an agreement signed to place the aircraft that came yesterday.

The plane left India a few days ago and made a number of technical stops before finally taking off from Mombasa yesterday for Seychelles.

An Indian ship in Port Victoria brought maintenance equipment, which Mr Kumar Nag said will be used on our identical aircraft when we get it from India.

Nation hopes to give further details about the plane in tomorrow’s issue.

 

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