New Delhi, June 17 (IANS): As part of an operational deployment to South Indian Ocean and South China Sea, ships of the Indian Navy's Eastern Fleet reached Kuantan in Malaysia on Wednesday on a four-day visit.

The fleet is under the command of Rear Admiral Ajendra Bahadur Singh, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet.

The Indian warships taking part in this deployment are INS Ranvir, a guided missile destroyer, commanded by Captain Jaswinder Singh, INS Satpura, indigenously built guided missile stealth frigate, commanded by Capt. Hari Krishnan, INS Shakti, a sophisticated Fleet tanker and support ship, commanded by Capt. Vikram Menon and INS Kamorta, the latest and indigenous Anti Submarine Warfare corvette, commanded by Commander Manoj Kumar Jha.

Earlier, during their deployment, these warships participated in IMDEX-15 at Singapore and the Indo-Singapore bilateral naval exercise SIMBEX.

India-Malaysia naval cooperation has largely been in the form of training interactions and exchange of goodwill visits by ships of both the navies.

India signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation with Malaysia in February, 1993.

Consequently, the Malaysia-India Defence Cooperation Committee (MIDCOM) was set-up to examine various aspects of defence cooperation. Issues such as training, combined exercises, exchange of personnel etc., are discussed during the MIDCOM meetings.

The statement said this visit was aimed at strengthening bilateral ties and enhancing inter-operability between navies of the two friendly nations.

It added that in pursuit of India's Look East' and 'Act East' policy, the ships had visited Singapore, Jakarta (Indonesia), and Freemantle (Australia).