eapon in their arsenal is money. Military planners are now intent on setting aside discretionary funds to potentially buy off "reconcilables," or militants who are fighting against US and NATO troops more for financial than ideological reasons.
Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of US Central Command, told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on December 9, 2009, that the "reintegration of reconcilables [is] a core objective of any sound counter-insurgency effort."
The money to lure militant insurgents over to the Afghan government side would come from the Commanders’ Emergency Response Fund, a spokesman for the Department of Defense said.
"The Fiscal Year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act includes authority for the Department of Defense to use a portion of its Commanders’ Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds to support a new, Afghan-led reintegration program in Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Mark Wright told EurasiaNet on January 11.
"These funds will be executed in coordination with the Government of Afghanistan, and with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, once such a program is developed in more detail," Wright added.
According to Section 1222 of the National Defense Authorization Act, "The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Government of Afghanistan and with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, may utilize such funds as necessary from amounts available for the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program for fiscal year 2010 to support the reintegration into Afghan society of those individuals who have renounced violence against the Government of Afghanistan."
CERP funds in the past have been used for a wide variety of purposes, including condolence payments to the families of civilian casualties, development grants to businesses and funding for militias fighting on behalf of the Afghan government.
Under the tentative vision for the reintegration scheme, low to mid-level militants who lay down their arms would be offered either a lump sum payment or jobs with salaries of around $240 per month. The Taliban is believed to pay fighters about $300 per month. No specific dollar amount for the reintegration scheme has been specified. Bu the total CERP budget for 2010 is $1.3 billion.
The reintegration program, in theory, would cover foreign militants operating in Afghanistan, including fighters belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). In recent months, the presence of foreign militants has grown in some areas of Afghanistan, especially in northern provinces such as Kunduz, which borders Tajikistan.
Central Asian political experts suggest that foreign militants would be less likely to be lured away by CERP funds.
"The IMU has developed a reputation, as far as anybody knows, of being a very serious jihadist group. They are increasingly active and essentially an affiliate of al Qaeda," said Paul Quinn-Judge, Central Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "They [IMU militants] are not country kids in Afghanistan who are earning some money on the side by occasionally attacking US or Allied troops."
"They are not the sort of people you would expect to take hand-outs or buy-outs from the Department of Defense," Quinn-Judge added.
Mars Sariev, a Bishkek-based political scientist, suggested a limited number of IMU militants might be tempted. "About 3,000 members of the IMU are ethnic Uzbeks," Sariev estimated. "Most people who join this kind of organization are poor and they join up because they want to make a social protest of sorts. If they get money for it, if they have an opportunity to do something else, the number of IMU members might fall."
Sariev added that Afghanistan’s northern neighbors would be pleased to see the reintegration scheme bear fruit. "I think the Central Asian countries and Russia would be only happy and breathe a sigh of relief if the scheme was successful," he said.
Quinn-Judge said any reintegration initiative that extended to IMU militants would not be blocked by Uzbekistan. However, officials in Tashkent likely have restrained expectations for the reintegration scheme, he suggested. "At the moment the Uzbeks and United States are getting on extremely well, [and] anything like this would be coordinated. But I would speculate the Uzbek security services are telling their American counterparts they don’t stand a chance," he said.
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South Korean army soldiers climb during their winter season military drill in Yanggu, about 175 km (108 miles) northeast of Seoul, January 14, 2010. 
A spokesman said unior defence ministers were expected to meet again next week following talks held in London on Thursday.
"We understand we will be invited. EADS will go there with the will to negotiate an acceptable solution," a company spokesman said.
EADS has appealed to a group of European NATO nations for extra funds to build the delayed troop and heavy equipment transporter, but said earlier this week that negotiations on the price of the plane had ground to a halt.
Germany, which has so far stood firm against financial relief, said on Friday buyers had agree don Thursday that they wanted the plane but "not at any price".
According to Russian and foreign media sources, India refused to buy Russian Il-78 fuel tanker aircraft. Indian officials motivated this decision with the non-conformity of planes to the customer’s requisitions. The spare parts supply and the after-sales service were also mentioned. “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia alternated its approach to the handling of the defense business. Nowadays we are facing problems with spare parts, the support of manufacturers and the delays conditioned by the centralized structure of their defense corporations”, Fali Homi Major, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Air Force told RIA Novosti. Instead of Russian planes India is likely to buy Airbus A330 MRTT manufactured by the European company EADS.
This is not the first juicy scandal connected with Russia’s defense exports. “The most well-known case is the scandal with Algeria when they refused to take the already procured MiG aircraft and sent them back to us. There are plenty of scandals with India in relation to various types of arms. It concerns naval weapons in the first place”, said Mr. Alexander Khramchihin of the Institute of Political and Defense Analysis in an interview to Bigness.ru.
Recollecting the year 2007 with the outbreak of scandal with 15 MiG-29CMT fighters shipped to Algeria . It appeared that the jet fighters, which were sold as brand new, contained “second-hand” parts. According to some information, the units from the planes with several hundreds of flight hours were used when assembling those aircraft.
One can recollect habitual claims from India which is one of our key partners in the field of defense cooperation. We remind the endless complaints with The Gorshkov aircraft carrier which was designed for India. The budget for its refurbishment was mounting endlessly which enormously irritated our client. Perplexity was also connected with the problems in the modernization of the ship.
Technical problems haunted Russia in the transfer of frigates, which India ordered from Russia . Air defense missile systems stubbornly failed to hit air targets. In many scandal situations (e.g. in the case of airplanes returned by Algeria) some observers incriminate the international backroom deal.
