DTN News: Philippines Wins South China Sea Case Against China

DTN News: Philippines Wins South China Sea Case Against China
Source: K. V. Seth - DTN News + The Guardian

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - July 12, 2016: China has lost a key international legal case over strategic reefs and atolls that it claims would give it control over disputed waters of the South China Sea. The judgment by an international tribunal in The Hague chiefly in favour of claims by the Philippines will increase global diplomatic pressure on Beijing to scale back military expansion in the sensitive area.

By depriving certain outcrops – some of which are exposed only at low tide – of territorial-generating status, the ruling effectively punches a series of holes in China’s all- 

encompassing “nine-dash” demarcation line that stretches deep into the South China Sea. It declares large areas of the sea to be neutral international waters.

Beijing claims 90% of the South China Sea, a maritime region believed to hold a wealth of untapped oil and gas reserves and through which roughly $4.5tn of ship-borne trade passes every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also contest China’s claims to islands and reef systems close to their territory than Beijing’s.

Sporadic violence between Chinese vessels and those of south-east Asia militaries have broken out in recent decades and the verdict, the first international legal decision on the issue, could have unpredictable consequences.

The court case at the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague, the UN-appointed tribunal that adjudicates in international disputes over maritime territory, has been running since 2013.

The judgment does not allocate any of the outcrops or islands to rival countries but instead indicates which maritime features are capable under international law of generating territorial rights over surrounding seas. 

China has previously stated that it “will neither accept nor participate in the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines”. The tribunal ruled, however, that China’s refusal to participate did not deprive the court of jurisdiction and that the Philippines’ decision to commence arbitration unilaterally was not an abuse of the convention’s dispute settlement procedures.

Prof Philippe Sands QC, who represented the Philippines in the hearing, said: “This is the most significant international legal case for almost the past 20 years since the Pinochet judgment.” Last year, US officials claimed the Chinese had built up an extra 800 hectares (2,000 acres) on their occupied outposts across the South China Sea over the previous 18 months.

The main focus of activity has been on Mischief Reef, where satellite images reveal the island is growing bigger, and is surrounded by fleets of dredgers and tankers.

Speaking on the eve of the court’s ruling, Bonnie Glaser, a senior Asia adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said she did not anticipate a major escalation from Beijing over its findings but admitted its reaction was hard to predict. “[If] the Chinese really do perceive that the ruling is just poking a finger in their eye I think there is a good possibility they will lash out,” she said.

“I believe we have all underestimated Xi Jinping,” Glaser said of China’s strongman president who has pursued an increasingly assertive foreign policy on issues such as the South China Sea. “He just seems quite comfortable with a high level of friction with every country.”

China’s foreign minister spoke to the US secretary of state, John Kerry, by telephone last week to warn Washington against moves that infringe on China’s sovereignty, Chinese state media reported.

And Beijing conducted military drills in the South China Sea, deploying at least two guided missile destroyers, the Shenyang and Ningbo, and one missile frigate deployed.

China says it follows a historical precedent set by the “nine-dash line” that Beijing drew in 1947 following the surrender of Japan. The line has been included in subsequent maps issued under Communist rule.

But the Philippines strongly contests China’s claims, specifically on nearby islands it says are part of the West Philippine Sea. Manila argued in seven hearings that China has exceeded its entitlement under the UN convention on the law of the sea. That gives China 12 miles of territorial waters around islands it controls, far less than claimed under the nine-dash line.

Beijing has the support of Russia and Saudi Arabia but has also garnered backing from dozens of smaller nations far from and not greatly affected by the hearing, including landlocked African countries Niger and Lesotho, as well as Palestine, Afghanistan and Togo. Vanuatu, a Pacific island nation of fewer than 300,000 citizens, also supports Beijing.

The Philippines has been backed by the US, UK, France, Japan and others.

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, is widely considered unpredictable and his moves in the next days and weeks will determine what could happen next.

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth + The Guardian
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*Photograph: IPF (International Pool of Friends) + DTN News / otherwise source stated
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DTN News - KOREAN PENINSULA NEWS: South Korea Says North's 'Rocket' Could Reach US

DTN News - KOREAN PENINSULA NEWS: South Korea Says North's 'Rocket' Could Reach US

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources AFP
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 23, 2012: North Korea's recent rocket launch amounted to the test of a ballistic missile capable of carrying a half-tonne payload as far as the US west coast, the South Korean defence ministry says.

North Korea launched its three-stage Unha-3 rocket on December 12, insisting it was a purely scientific mission aimed at putting a polar-orbiting satellite in space.

South Korea's estimate was based on analysis of an oxidiser container - recovered from the rocket's first-stage splashdown site - which stored red fuming nitric acid to fuel the first-stage propellant.

"Based on our analysis and simulation, the missile is capable of flying more than 10,000 kilometres with a warhead of 500-600 kilograms," a defence ministry official said.

The estimated range of 10,000 kilometres covers the whole of Asia, eastern Europe and western Africa as well as Alaska and a large part of the US west coast including San Francisco.

Without any debris from the second and third stages to analyse, the official said it could not be determined if the rocket had re-entry capability - a key element of inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology.

Most of the world saw the North's rocket launch as a disguised ballistic missile test that violates UN resolutions imposed after Pyongyang conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

The success of the launch was seen as a major strategic step forward for the isolated North, although missile experts differed on the level of ballistic capability demonstrated by the rocket.

The debris collected by the South Koreans was made of an alloy of aluminium and magnesium with eight panels welded manually.

"Welding was crude, done manually," the ministry official said, adding that oxidiser containers for storing toxic chemicals are rarely used by countries with advanced space technology.

The South's navy later recovered three more pieces of the rocket - a fuel tank, a combustion chamber and an engine connection rod - from the Yellow Sea and has been analysing them since Friday, Yonhap news agency said.

"As additional pieces have been salvaged, we will be able to look deeper into the function and structure of North Korea's long-range rocket," said a defence ministry official quoted by Yonhap.

The communist North apparently timed the widely-condemned launch to mark the first anniversary of the death of its longtime ruler Kim Jong-Il and drum up more support for his son and successor, Kim Jong-Un.

Since the launch, Pyongyang's propaganda machine has gone into overdrive to heap praise on the ruling Kim dynasty for leading the successful mission and to urge support for the young ruler who took over a year ago.

The nuclear-armed nation has awarded medals to 101 rocket scientists and technicians who worked on the launch, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

"By successfully launching satellite Kwangmyongsong 3-2, they instilled great national self-esteem... and dealt a sledge-hammer blow at the hostile forces' desperate moves to check the advance of (the North)," it said.

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MAP: Korea, Democratic People S Republic Of

North Korea's recent rocket launch amounted 

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources AFP
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - KOREAN PENINSULA NEWS: Satellite Images Suggest 'Looming' N.Korea Missile Test

DTN News - KOREAN PENINSULA NEWS: Satellite Images Suggest 'Looming' N.Korea Missile Test

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources AFP
(NSI News Source Info) SINGAPORE - November 28, 2012: North Korea could carry out a long-range missile test in the next three weeks, with new satellite images showing increased launch site activity, according to satellite operator DigitalGlobe Inc.


The global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery said Monday that the new pictures showed significant movement at North Korea's Sohae (West Sea) Satellite Launch Station.

"Given the observed level of activity noted, of a new tent, trucks, people and numerous portable fuel/oxidizer tanks, should North Korea desire -- it could possibly conduct its fifth satellite launch event during the next three weeks," it said.

DigitalGlobe said the type of activity was consistent with preparations observed before North Korea's failed launch of its Unha-3 missile in April.

Pyongyang insisted the April launch bid was aimed at putting a satellite in orbit, but the United States and United Nations denounced the mission as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The test put a halt to international efforts to engage the isolated nation, with the United States calling off plans to deliver badly needed food assistance.

The North is in the final stage of preparations for a launch after missile parts were transported to the launch site early this month, an unnamed senior military official told Yonhap news agency.

"(The South Korean military) is judging that there is high possibility of (the North's) firing off the missile between December and January of next year," the official was quoted as saying.

Any test in the next three weeks would cast a heavy cloud over South Korea's presidential election on December 19.

There have been widespread concerns in Seoul that the North would seek to influence the ballot by conducting a missile launch or provoking a border clash.

The Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper had reported last week that the US government had already warned Japan and South Korea that an imminent test was possible.

Last month, the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said satellite images showed North Korea had conducted motor tests at the Sohae site to improve its long-range missiles.

Some analysts believe that a North Korean rocket, if successfully developed, could eventually reach the range to hit the United States.

North Korea is known to have an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) in development -- the Taepodong-2 -- but it has never been tested successfully.

Days after the failed April test, North Korea raised eyebrows by displaying what appeared to be a new set of ICBMs at a military parade to mark the 100th birthday of the North's late founder Kim Il-Sung.

But Western military analysts and UN sanctions experts concluded that the display models were simply mock-ups.

Full coverage

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*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources AFP
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DTN News - SYRIA UNREST: In Fleeing Pilot, Hints Of Trouble For Syria’s Assad

DTN News - SYRIA UNREST: In Fleeing Pilot, Hints Of Trouble For Syria’s Assad

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By C. J. Chivers for The New York Times
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - July 18, 2012: To escape the government he served until it gave him an order he could not obey, Capt. Akhmed Trad, a pilot in Syria’s air force, needed a plan: how to spirit himself over a border quickly, and leave no family behind.

In hurried meetings between the pilot and his parents, and indirect conversations over cellphones, evading what they worried were monitored calls, the Trad family set a time and place for everyone to meet, and fled.

Now safely in Turkey, where he is providing information to the rebels and helping them plan attacks, Captain Trad represents one of the great challenges to the government of President Bashar al-Assad and his military.

The Syrian government hails from the Alawite minority. But much of its administration and its military ability depend on Sunni bureaucrats, soldiers and officers like Captain Trad, whose alienation has been growing and whose defections risk increasing as Syria’s internal war takes on deepening sectarian tones.

Defected Sunni army officers have played a large role in the armed opposition since the war began last year, and they lead many of the field units of the Free Syrian Army, the umbrella antigovernment force. While the skills of defected air force pilots have less direct application for the rebels (who have no aircraft), the pilots’ decisions to join the uprising amount to both a moral and public relations victory for the rebels, and undermine the Assad military’s strength.

Captain Trad, interviewed with several family members in a village near this city by the Turkish-Syrian border, said he decided last year to defect, and he waited for his chance. When violence against Sunni citizens escalated this spring, he decided he could serve no more.

Captain Trad is a Mi-17 helicopter pilot; he said his aircraft was equipped to fire rockets. Pro-Assad forces were accused of ethnically motivated killings of Sunni Muslims in Houla, and as the primarily Sunni opposition forces were gaining strength, his commanders ordered his helicopter squadron to attack cities where the resistance was strong, including Idlib. This is where the Trads were born.

“We were told to bomb them, and for us, we did not accept it,” he said. “Bomb what? My town and my friends?”

Captain Trad said he had not yet fired a weapon in the war; he said he had shuttled troops and supplies, and had been assigned to protect Syrian V.I.P.’s.  

Captain Trad traveled to Aleppo, deceiving his commander and the military along the way, and prepared to rush his family over the border. Once in Aleppo, he met one of his brothers, Mohammed, an L-39 training pilot who was posted to an air force academy there but had been convalescing from shrapnel wounds suffered when an officers’ bus was hit by a bomb in April.

Their extended family — 15 people in all, including 5 women and 4 children — were waiting, too, ready for a dash north to the border, a journey made in multiple cars with a scout traveling ahead, looking for checkpoints or patrols and relaying information by cellphone. “It was like an operation,” said Thaer Trad, another of his brothers.

Short of the border, they left the cars and met a guide from a smuggling network. He showed them the route on the border area’s many foot trails, repeating the path of thousands of other Sunnis who have fled.

Just before crossing, Akhmed Trad said, his commander, who had been calling Mohammed Trad’s cellphone all day in search of Akhmed, called again, demanding to know why Akhmed had not reported to duty in Damascus. The two officers switched off their phones, crossed the border and became refugees.

Akhmed Trad was not a ground-combat officer. He joined the Free Syrian Army in a support role. These days, he said, he works in a refugee camp in Turkey, helping fellow Syrians with humanitarian aid. He said he also spends time sharing intelligence with ground fighters. “I give information about the air bases and where the helicopters are,” he said. His insider’s portrait of Syria’s helicopter squadrons offers details of a military capacity that, while potent, is undermined by sectarian division and operational limits.

For the pilots, squadron life could be riven by unequal standards and simmering distrust. Though Alawites are a minority, they make up roughly two-thirds of the pilots, another pilot who defected said. Captain Trad said Alawite officers had higher social standing, greater professional latitude and more privileges than their Sunni colleagues: a climate that fueled resentment.

“If a Sunni officer is even five minutes late, there will be a response,” he said. “But let an Alawite officer be late for a day. Nothing will happen to him.”

The Alawite commanders’ suspicions were so great that Sunni pilots, when they are not flying, are largely confined to bases, he said. They are rarely allowed to leave their duty stations to visit their families, or meet together outside the base walls, out of fear that they will defect or rise up.

In one five-month period, he said, he was allowed to leave his base only 10 times when off duty; Alawite pilots could go home between each mission.

Helicopters in his squadron flew with three-man crews, he said, but their commanders made certain no crews were all Sunni.

Since he and his brother fled, Akhmed Trad said, a group of like-minded Sunni helicopter pilots in his squadron have also deserted and crossed lines. “Of my friends, there were eight,” he said. “All of them defected.”

Qassem Saaddedine, a former Syrian Air Force colonel and a MIG-23BN airplane pilot who defected seven months ago and is now head of the opposition’s military council in Rastan, Syria, said Friday that about 15 pilots had defected to date. He said he expected more.

“Morale is becoming weaker and weaker among the pilots,” he said. “This regime is not using Sunni pilots. They fear after their defection they might hit the presidential palace” with ordnance.

These numbers cannot be independently confirmed. In Captain Trad’s case, he showed The New York Times his Syrian officer’s identification card and accurately answered an extensive set of questions about Mi-17 munitions. He also gave thorough descriptions of tactics, demonstrating a degree of knowledge consistent with an aviation career.

The Syrian Air Force is equipped with Russian-built helicopters — transport aircraft of the Mi-8 family and attack aircraft of the Mi-24 line — widely recognized as reliable and sturdy.

The aircraft are also well armed. He said his squadron was regularly equipped with S-5 rocket pods and trained to drop OFAB unguided bombs and RBK cluster-munitions canisters. By the time he defected in June, he said, pilots were routinely firing S-5 rockets and sometimes dropping OFABs, but he was not aware of any cluster-munitions use yet.

There were reports last week of cluster munitions being used by Syrian helicopters; the reports, while gaining credibility, have not been independently verified.

For all of the technical capacity, the air force suffers from shortfalls in skills and equipment, as well as the sectarian tension. Pilot-training hours are less than in the West — Captain Trad said he had 300 flight hours in a career nearly a decade long, far less than that of a Western pilot of similar service time.

And the Mi-8 and Mi-17 pilots do not have night-vision goggles or significant experience flying by darkness, limiting their influence in battle and allowing opposition forces greater leeway at night.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By C. J. Chivers for The New York Times
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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