
Monday, September 01, 2008
Georgia demands Russian peacekeepers' withdrawal from Abkhazia

Russia may push forward with S-300 sales to Iran

Commenting on an article in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper saying Russia is using the plans as a bargaining chip in its standoff with America, Ruslan Pukhov, director of Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said: "In the current situation, when the U.S. and the West in general are stubbornly gearing toward a confrontation with Russia after the events in South Ossetia, the implementation of a lucrative contract on the deliveries of S-300 [air defense systems] to Iran looks like a logical step."
The U.S. and Israel were alarmed by media reports, which started circulating as early as 2005, on the possible delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran, as these systems could greatly improve Iranian defenses against any air strike on its strategically important sites, including nuclear facilities.
The advanced version of the S-300 missile system, called S-300PMU1 (SA-20 Gargoyle), has a range of over 150 kilometers (over 100 miles) and can intercept ballistic missiles and aircraft at low and high altitudes, making the system an effective tool for warding off possible air strikes.
The issue was again raised in December last year when Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said Russia had agreed to deliver to Iran an unspecified number of advanced S-300 air defense complexes under a previously signed contract.
However, Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation said the issue of the delivery of S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran was not a subject of current or past negotiations.
Israeli defense sources, however, said in July that Iran was expected to take delivery of Russian S-300 air defense systems by the end of 2008.
Pukhov said: "This may be true. While Russia and the West were on good terms, the contract could have been 'frozen' for the time being. But now may be the perfect time to move forward with the fulfillment of the S-300 contract."
According to the Russian analyst, S-300 missiles and previously delivered Tor-M1 missiles would help Iran build a strong network of long- and medium-range 'defensive rings' to thwart any attempts to destroy key nuclear facilities in the country.
Moscow supplied Iran with 29 Tor-M1 air defense missile systems in late January under a $700-million contract signed in late 2005. Russia has also trained Iranian Tor-M1 specialists, including radar operators and crew commanders.
"Anyone attempting to threaten Iran with aerial bombardment would have to consider the possibility of strong and effective resistance," the expert said.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi denied on Monday reports that Tehran had bought S-300 air defense systems from Russia.
"Our missile and technical capability completely depends on the efforts of Iranian scientists," he said.
U.S. warship met by anti-NATO protests in Ukraine's Sevastopol

Vladimir Putin helps save Ussuri tigers
Vladimir Putin helps save Ussuri tigers
September 1, 2008 NSI News Source Info
The Amur (Ussuri) tiger, one of the world’s rarest predators living in Russia’s Far East, China and Korea, is registered in the International Red Data Book. The Ussuri tiger population, which numbered 100,000 a century ago, has now dwindled to 4,000. According to the 2006 census, about 450 Ussuri tigers live in Russia’s Primorye (Maritime) Territory and Amur Region.
August 31, 2008. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, right, and Chief Veterinary Doctor of the Moscow Zoo, Mikhail Shenetsky, left, with a tranquilizer gun.
Scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution showed Putin transmitter neck-straps for monitoring the health of tigers and their migration routes.
A five-year-old female Ussuri tiger, immobilized with a tranquilizer gun.
The Russian Academy of Sciences program to study the Ussuri tiger is the first independent project implemented by Russian scientists in this sphere.





Israel as a Strategic Threat to Russia and the United States of America

Envoy urges North Korea to restart nuclear disablement

(NSI News Source Info) SEOUL - September 1, 2008: South Korea's nuclear envoy Kim Sook urged North Korea Monday to restart work to disable its nuclear plants and stop its "typical" brinkmanship in negotiations.
The North announced last week it had halted work to disable the plants, and would consider repairing them, because the United States has failed to remove it from a terrorism blacklist.
The announcement was the latest stumbling block to progress in an aid-for-disarmament deal agreed last year by the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.
The US says it will not act until the communist state agrees on procedures to verify details of its nuclear programme, which it disclosed last June.
"The North Korean announcement appears to be a typical tactic," envoy Kim Sook told a forum in Seoul.
He said the North was trying to pressure its five negotiating partners to "back down on their demand for rigorous verification" of nuclear activites.
"If North Korea believes that it can weaken the resolve of the five parties, it is mistaken," Kim said.
"The North should immediately resume the disablement measures and cooperate in the establishment of a verification regime."
North Korea, which tested an atomic bomb on October 2006, says it has completed about 80 percent of the disablement work at the Yongbyon complex, the source of weapons-grade plutonium.
But it is bridling at US demands that inspectors take samples of material to try to verify how much plutonium has been produced.
The disabling is supposed to be a prelude to the pact's final phase, under which the North would dismantle the plants and surrender atomic material and weapons in return for diplomatic relations with Washington and Tokyo and other benefits.
Kim said the North "will face the moment of truth" when the time comes for the final phase, and the influence of its powerful military will grow.
"That is why it will be more difficult as we aim to remove the nuclear arsenal, programme and all existing materials."
Australia reconsiders nuclear deal with Russia

(NSI News Source Info) CANBERRA - September 1, 2008: Australia is reconsidering a pact to sell uranium to Russia following its military push into Georgia, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith warned on Monday.
He spoke as the head of a parliamentary committee examining the deal that would allow sales of uranium for use in Russia's civil nuclear power industry, expanding on the terms of a 1990 agreement, raised fears the yellowcake could be diverted for nuclear weapons use.
Smith told parliament that Australia would take into account Russia's actions in Georgia and the current state of Moscow's ties with Canberra when deciding whether to ratify the pact signed by the two countries last year.
"When considering ratification, the government will take into account not just the merits of the agreement but recent and ongoing events in Georgia and the state of Australia's bilateral relationship with the Russian Federation," Smith said.
Smith said he made Australia's views clear to Russia's ambassador when he summoned the envoy last week to call on Moscow to pull its troops in Georgia back to the positions they held before the conflict began on August 8.
He also criticised Russia's decision to recognise the independence of the Georgian rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as unhelpful.
Kelvin Thompson, who chairs the parliamentary treaties committee, meanwhile said he had concerns over whether Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would honour the terms of the civilian nuclear agreement.
"I think that we could supply uranium to him and if he changed his mind about the uses to which he was going to put it, I don't think we'd have any effective comeback at all.
"Recently he's taken South Ossetia and another province off Georgia and there's no real comeback over that," he added.
Russia has been fiercely criticised by a range of Western countries since its tanks and troops burst into Georgia last month to push back a Georgian offensive to retake South Ossetia, which broke away from Tbilisi in the early 1990s with Moscow's backing.
Russian troops still hold positions in western Georgia, serving in what Moscow describes as a peacekeeping mission. Tbilisi calls them an occupation force.
Given the current situation in Georgia, Thompson said, Australia should at least consider delaying ratifying the 2007 agreement until after a review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, scheduled for 2010.
He said another concern was that his parliamentary treaties committee heard Monday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had not carried out any inspections in Russia since 2001.
"There has been a nuclear smuggling problem in the past and Russia and states of the former USSR are involved in the large majority of documented incidents. There needs to be a proper regime of inspections," he said.
The committee must submit a report on the agreement to the government which Smith said Canberra would take into account before making a final decision on ratification of the pact.
However Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office director general John Carlson said it was unlikely Russia would use Australian uranium for the production of nuclear weapons.
"Australian uranium won't be used for weapons because Russia has such an enormous surplus there's no reason why it would even think of doing so," he said.
China cannot back Russia in Georgia crisis: analysts

Violence shakes India's north

(NSI News Source Info) Kolkata, India - September 1, 2008: It is a separatist feud from within that India has rarely seen before: Jammu against Kashmir and Kashmir against Jammu, two regions literally at war. But as this northernmost state of India reels under a prolonged bout of communal violence -- after a long hiatus -- leading to renewed terror attacks, Jammu and Kashmir, already known as one of the world's most dangerous spots, may be growing even more perilous.
Experts fear that if the three-month-long agitation that already has created a deep communal divide in the region is not suppressed quickly, it could well snowball into a crisis beyond India's control.
"The Jammu and Kashmir problem has already taken a very serious turn, as the state is heading toward splitting into communal lines. But if the (Indian) government does not take control of the situation by dialogue first, and then, if need be, use even force, Jammu and Kashmir could become a precarious region for not only India, but also for the whole world," said A.K. Verma, a security analyst who recently retired as the head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's foreign intelligence agency that focuses on Pakistan.
Indeed, ever since this former princely state was partitioned between India and Pakistan in 1947, the region has been tumultuous, with India and Pakistan both claiming jurisdiction over the whole territory. But despite the tensions between the two countries that led to violent eruptions at times, Jammu and Kashmir managed to remain as one, warding off all external pressures to split into two -- Jammu for the Hindus and Kashmir for the Muslims. But today, the region seems to be cracking from within.
The current agitation has assumed separatist overtones. "Kashmir is back on a razor's edge," says M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service and now a foreign affairs commentator.
It all started over a piece of land.
It began in May this year when the government of Jammu and Kashmir ordered the transfer of 40 acres of forest land to the Shri Amaranth Shrine Board -- a conglomerate of about 30 Hindu groups that manages the annual Hindu pilgrimage to Amarnath, a remote cave deep in the Himalayas near Kashmir -- for the construction of temporary shelters for the Amarnath travelers.
The order sparked violent protests in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley, where politicians in favor of separating Kashmir from India considered the transfer a loss of territory to Hindu outsiders, and raised the specter of Hindu encroachment on the Muslim majority in the state.
They created violent protests against the transfer, and as things went out of control, the state government backtracked and reversed the transfer order. While the Kashmir valley calmed down, the Hindus in Jammu saw the revocation of the order as a disregard of the minority's interests within the state, and the Hindu-dominated area erupted in large-scale violence that took an even more serious turn.
Hindu militants not only rioted across the district, but the protesters also created an economic blockade that cut off the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley from the rest of India.
With the situation going from bad to worse, it was time for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene. He called for an all-party meeting on Aug. 20 to come up with "an immediate initiative for a dialogue to facilitate a suspension of the agitation and a peaceful resolution."
But that meeting failed to reach a consensus and ended in a stalemate. And while protests refuse to die down, the situation in the region now, many say, has never been so bad. Not only has the region already seen 40 deaths but worse, the region has come under renewed terror attacks.
Terrorists struck Jammu on Wednesday, storming into the city, killing five and holding six people hostage. The crisis was eventually brought to an end after police managed to kill the terrorists in an 18-hour gun battle, but not before it resulted in two more deaths of innocents. According to authorities, even though the rest of India has seen intermittent terrorist attacks, this was the first in Jammu and Kashmir in six years.
More terror attacks may be in the offing. Quoting officials, a recent report in the Times of India said there were 750 to 800 terrorists active in Jammu and Kashmir, adding that hundreds more were positioned in "launch pads" along the border with Pakistan, waiting to cross over and take advantage of the turmoil in the state to create further security problems.
Army chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor says there are as many as 40 terrorist training camps operating across the border, with 20 along the Jammu and Kashmir border with Pakistan and another 20 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Admittedly, the region has never been a peaceful territory in the last 60 years, but according to Vijay Sazawal, international coordinator of the Indo-American Kashmir Forum, an advocacy organization for Kashmiri Hindus, the region has never seen a communal uprising like this emerging from within either. Of course, communal passions have erupted in the region many times in the past -- the last major one was seen in 1990, when the region experienced "a dangerous unleashing of this passion" -- but that, too, according to Sazawal, was "mostly orchestrated by Pakistani-trained operatives."
But the difference this time around, say experts, is that the government's mishandling and competing political forces trying to take advantage of a simple administrative issue, the land transfer, have allowed the situation to snowball into a violent standoff.
According to the Institute for Conflict Management, a Delhi-based think tank on Indian security issues, "It was solely due to the administrative incompetence of the Indian government and the government of J&K that the state has turned into a sectarian and separatist problem."
However, another theory is that the current unrest has been engineered by Pakistan to strengthen the anti-India movement and lend force to the separatist issue.
"There has been a complete misinterpretation of the situation of J&K for many years, with overwhelming focus only on declining terrorism, whereas no one has paid attention to the motives and efforts of Pakistanis and the Pakistan-backed groups," says Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management.
The proponents of this theory believe that over the past four or five years, forces such as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and its military, as well as terrorist organizations and separatist forces in Jammu and Kashmir such as Tehreek-i-Hurriyat and the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, have been maintaining an assured level of violence, while at the same time trying to build up political extremist-dominated movements.
And in that pursuit, "over the past year and a half these forces have used various issues to destabilize the region and provoke greater street mobilization in favor of the separatism and radical elements in Pakistan and J&K," the think tank says.
For instance, ICM claims that in 2006 Islamists exposed a prostitution racket in the state to establish that the secular and modern policies of India were in fact destroying the Islamic cultural environment of Jammu and Kashmir. Later, the same forces engineered the rape and murder of a teenager to start a prejudicial campaign against the presence of non-ethnic Kashmiri workers.
The current problem has given yet another opportunity to forces hoping to separate Kashmir from India, says Kanchan Laxman, a fellow at the ICM. It will help them transform the predominantly terrorist movement into a more wide-based movement of political extremism, to secure a stronger position at the negotiating table and achieve what has not been possible on the ground through terrorism alone.
This is why Sahni of ICN feels India needs to clamp down on all the elements in the current dispute, including the Hindus, and clamp down hard.
"India has, for far too long, tolerated violent dissent in the name of democracy. This has not only widened the separatist spaces in J&K, it has also made moderate and secular politics inadequate for handing radical forces. The hitherto soft approach of the Indian administration, therefore, must be brought to an end, and the necessity now is to use a far greater force than what has been used so far, to bring the region under control," he says.
Al Qaeda's terror campaign in Algeria

Italy's Berlusconi urges against new standoff with Russia

Russia wants arms embargo on Georgia

Russian-Kazakh war games start in Urals

Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)