KARACHI, May 7: Chief of the Navy Staff Admiral Shahid Karimullah said on Friday that under globalization and internationalism navies would not be - but for the protection of trade and commerce.

Addressing the International Ports and Shipping Conference (IPSC) he said, "there was a time when we used to say that the world around us was changing fast - let me tell you it is not so any more - because the world around us has already changed".

For this purpose, the admiral said last month Pakistan Navy contributed a frigate for the worldwide peace programme to be run by maritime coalition forces for countering terrorism.

He said globalization and internationalism is here - and to stay. Boundaries are changing their meaning. The days of walls, barbed wires, iron curtains, and trenched armies are gone. Space has changed to cyber-space and now operates in four dimensions - the fourth one being the dimension of information.

He said even enemies were changing to adversaries, adversaries are exchanging place with competitors, and competitors prefer to be called peaceful co-existors. It is to this fourth dimension of information the IPSC belongs to.

Exchange of information and ideas, joint planning, knowledge of each others' limitations, and idiosyncrasies - all these are an essential ingredient of progress today, he added.

"Man learnt the art of seafaring simultaneously for two purpose: commerce through merchant marines and protection of commerce through men of war," he said. The very purposes of the navies, the naval chief said was to keep the sea lines of communication open so that the trade may ply safe and uninterrupted.

Pakistan Navy, he further said has always performed this task with success and will always do so in future as well. "I recall from my war college days that the term maritime subsumes four entities: The exclusive sea zones and their resources, the ports and harbours, the merchant marines, and the naval forces," he added.

As an adviser to the government on maritime affairs, navy accounts for only 25 per cent of my responsibilities. Ports and harbours and shipping, he said take the bulk share of 50 per cent.

Mr Karimullah said navies are also called ambassadors at large. By its very nature sea has always been and will always be mankind's heritage. It belongs to every one, and boundaries start to get hazy when they reach the sea. There is an element of internationalism about the sea and every thing connected to it - and ports and shipping are no exception.

He said that the conference is a manifestation of this very international and global nature of sea. Whereas land lends itself to tangible and concrete physical features and thus tends to demarcate lines the sea washes them away in its expanse.

The naval chief said no economy has ever survived in isolation and nor will it in future. If trade and commerce is to flourish - then contact, interaction, talking, debating, and conferencing has to be made a way of life.

The theme of the conference, he said has so aptly been chosen. The world is indeed learning to deal with regions rather than countries - the Middle East, the Far East, the South Asia, the Caribbean, the North America, the Europe and the Africa - this is what the world now talks about.

He said that nation states are comfortable to be referred to as Saarc states, the Asean states, the NAFTA rim, and the EU members. Therefore, we have to learn to exist and prosper first as a region, and then integrate ourselves in the global village.

He said a region at war and conflict will surely be left behind. "Let me remind us all that unless the world has a stake in our region no one is interested in our problems and plights," he maintained.