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Beijing: A Shanghai shipyard has completed the first of four frigates for delivery to Pakistan, the China Daily reported on Saturday, in the first such order from China by the Pakistani navy.
The deal is a "catalyst" for cooperation on construction of other vessels, the paper said, citing Pakistani chief of naval staff Mohammad Afzal Tahir. He will attend a launch ceremony for the F-22P frigate in Shanghai tomorrow.
The fourth and last vessel will be completed at a Karachi shipyard in 2013, to fulfil a pledge to transfer Chinese shipbuilding technology that was part of the April 2005 agreement to build the frigates.
"They will be deployed for the defence of our maritime interests and to meet our commitments in other aspects of maritime diplomacy," the paper quoted Tahir as saying. It noted that Pakistan had previously procured such military hardware from Western countries, including Britain and France.
The F-22P is a modification of a Chinese frigate that uses a Russian-designed main gun rather than a Chinese model. It will be armed with eight surface-to-air missiles and eight surface-to-surface missiles, according to Wikipedia sources.
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