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Indonesian army chief Andika Perkasa denied the expansion of the exercise was due to the situation in the Taiwan Strait, saying the drills had been planned long before that.
Aquilino, echoing Perkasa, said the annual exercises with other countries “continue to become more free-flowing and complex because all the nations in the region are getting better”.
Canada, France, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Britain participated in the exercise as observer nations.
Source: Agence France-Presse
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