Moscow, Jan 21: Describing the BrahMos cruise missile, developed jointly by India and Russia, as "highly lethal" and capable of upsetting the balance of forces in any region where they may appear, a top Russian defence official has said Moscow was not keen on its export to other countries.
BrahMos is the joint Indo-Russian venture for the production of the high-tech cruise missiles.
Under the initial agreement, Moscow and New Delhi had agreed to jointly export it to "friendly" countries. However, recent aggressive marketing moves by the New Delhi-based JV had drawn flaks from the Russian missile industry.
"This is a very lethal and potent weapon system, which can upset balance of forces in any region where it may appear, be it in our neighbourhood, Indian Ocean or Latin America.
"India is one thing, she is our strategic partnership and poses no military threat to Russia, but we are not keen on giving it to other countries, be it China or any other friendly nation," Colonel-General Anatoly Mazurkevich said.
Mazurkevich, who heads international cooperation department of the Russian Defence Ministry, said that one of the reasons for not Russia not keen to export this weapon, "highly lethal for potential enemies", is that its range could be easily extended from the current 300 km, allowed under Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
"We are not worried about it as we have nuclear weapons, but this (unauthorised extension of range) may pose threat not only to India but also to our other friends and allies," Mazurkevich underscored.
He said BrahMos is initially an anti-ship cruise missile and Russia is closely cooperating with India in the development of its other variants including land and air based.
"Coupled with Sukhoi SU-30MKI it makes a highly potent weapon system," General Mazurkevich said.
However, the trial of this system requires heavy financing and Russia would help India in this, he said.
"Two-three trials of BrahMos Air Force version would equal the cost of a SU-30MKI fighter, but we have expertise, how to do this at much lesser cost," Mazurkevich said, adding that "unveiling and enhancing" the hidden potential of new weapon systems like BrahMos cruise missiles, SU-30MKI fighters and T-90s Main Battle Tanks would be one of the thrust areas Indo-Russian military-to-military cooperation.
Posted by: john ||
01/21/2007 18:27 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#3
The Russian political faction that is anti-Chinese has gained some clout recently, especially with the troubles the Russians are having with the Chinese "businessmen" operating in Siberia. The Russian Mafia is not too thrilled with the Triads taking over their historic turf, and are funding politicians that stress the permanent Russian nature of Siberia. Also, even though China is now buying a lot of gear from the Russians, the Chinese are really pushing the technology transfer angle, which means in 10 or so years, bye bye to sales. The Indians on the other hand are doing joint development, paying for research in hard currency, have been major Russian/Soviet arms buyers for 4 decades, and are not making any suggestions of possible switchover about any areas in Russia. There has been a strong pro-Indian faction in Russia, at least from the 1920s on, when the Indian Communist Party was so supportive of the Soviets. Plus, a counterbalancing force to the 1.2 billion Chinese is a geopolitical godsend.
1965. 1999. Thirty-four years. No change of thinking. We are consistent and dogged. Thats a quality generally found among the asinine population
Lets get this straight. Every state needs an army which means the army is a public good; which also means no objective person can be opposed to the army per se. The problem begins when an army decides that it wants to have a state. The categories of fair and foul go haywire at that point and the politics of a state is turned into one long walpurgesnacht.
I never knew that a remote and somewhat forgotten city of Southern Punjab, Bahawalpur, would come alive on these pages. The last time it got regular projection was when friend N, now Lady N, wrote Letter from Bahawalpur. But that was years ago and Bahawalpur had to wait for the recent exchange (Dr Siddiqa, angry letter, my column, a spate of angry letters!) to emerge on the national map.
The other good thing that has happened is the letting out of a secret (actually not so secret in hack-business) there is a full stable of bhanjas in this country who jump at the drop of a hat to defend the mamas.
Four people were arrested with 6 kg (13.2 lb) of powerful explosives near a crowded railway station in Mumbai on Saturday, six months after a string of train bombings that killed 186 people in the financial hub.
The arrests were made near the Andheri station, one of the busiest halts on Mumbais suburban railway network, following a tip-off by intelligence agencies, police said. We can not say now if these people are just carriers of the explosives or they were planning any attack, said a senior officer, who declined to be identified.
The seizure came days before Indias Jan. 26 Republic Day, when anti-India militants and separatists have traditionally unleashed violence and called for boycotts of the celebrations. Seven bombs ripped through trains and stations on Mumbais local railway network last July, for which investigating agencies have blamed Pakistan-based Islamist militants fighting Indian rule in the northern revolt-torn region of Kashmir.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[13 views]
Top|| File under:
Delegations from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) participated in the 21st meeting of a subcommittee on border security in Landi Kotal on Saturday, to discuss ways of improving cooperation for security on the Pak-Afghan Border.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
Tribal Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud has said this years spring offensive in Afghanistan will be even bloodier than last year. The mujahideen (holy warriors) will give a tougher fight this year than last year, he told Daily Times at a secret location in South Waziristan, after taking this correspondent on a tour of Kot Kalay, where an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp killed eight people on Tuesday. I hate to be the one to notice the inconvenient, but the Paks have been forever and a day maintaining the fiction that the Talibs are an Afghan phenomenon and an Afghan problem. Their nifty treaty in Wazoo constrains the local turbans from crossing the border to kill people in a sovreign neighboring country. Yet Baitullah remains blissfully unaware of any constraints on his violent impulses and purports to speak for all the Taliban.
More than 4,000 people were killed in last years Taliban-linked insurgency in Afghanistan. Around 1,000 were civilians, more than 100 coalition soldiers and the rest were said to be insurgents. That's 2900 dead turbans to 100 dead good guys, which is a 29:1 kill ratio. They'd really be well advised to go into a different line of work. They obviously don't have any aptitude for warfare, despite their fearsome grimaces and their habit of waving guns.
This years spring offensive will be fought harder than before as we want to build on last years successes, said Baitullah, who struck a peace deal with the government in February 2005. Such as they were. They seem to have been mainly in the press, rather than on the battlefield.
Baitullah vowed to avenge Tuesdays airstrike. They launch airstrikes on us and we respond with suicide attack, he said amidst dozens of armed militants who were guarding him. More than 40 army recruits were killed in a suicide attack at Darrgai on November 8, following an airstrike on a madrassa in Bajaur on October 30 in which 83 people were killed.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
'Baitullah vowed to avenge Tuesdays airstrike. They launch airstrikes on us and we respond with suicide attack,' Yeah go ahead, we get to reuse our weapon delivery system.
#2
If it gets any more bloody for the Taliban, they will be re-enacting Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Kamikazees aside, what military tactics have the Taliban demonstrated any mastery of? They are desperate enough to be attacking in the winter, when all of our technological advantages come into play; they have lost at least 2900 troops in no win situations, without even taking and holding a single town; and they are facing ever-improving local troops in the form of the Afghan Army. About the only thing the Taliban has going for it is the high number of dirt-stupid Paki teenagers they can pay/brainwash/recruit into their cannon fodder units.
The Taliban on Saturday rejected claims made by a captured spokesman that Taliban chief Mullah Omar was in Quetta under Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) protection, stressing that the man did not know the movements military secrets.
The Taliban also rubbished statements by Doctor Mohammad Hanif, (whose real name is Abdul Haq Haqiq) that the group was being aided by Pakistans ISI agency and that it was operating suicide training camps in Pakistan. Hanif, 26, made the claims during a videotaped interrogation released by Afghan intelligence last Wednesday, following his arrest two days earlier while allegedly crossing from Pakistan into the Afghan province of Nangarhar. A Taliban statement posted on its website said that Hanif neither held a sufficiently senior position nor had been with the group long enough to know its military secrets.
These claims have no basis and no proof, said a Dari language version of the statement from Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan media committee." "Doctor Hanif wasnt with the Taliban for long enough to know about the location of Amir-ul-Momineen (the Leader of Muslims). He is not old enough to know about Amir-ul-Momineen or to know about the Taliban military secrets.
While the Taliban statement did not say where Mullah Omar was, it did go on to deny reports that its leaders had ordered the killing of Mullah Dadullah, the movements top commander in southern Afghanistan. Afghan officials had said that Hanif was found with documents alleging Dadullahs involvement in the killing last month of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, a close associate of Omar and Osama Bin Laden, in an air strike by foreign forces in the southern province of Helmand. The Taliban statement described Dadullah as an obedient and loyal fighter. It is clear that he (Hanif) has been interrogated under pressure or things have been added to what he has said, the statement said. Pakistan has also rejected Hanifs claims as absurd.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If you don't know where he is, how do you know where he's not?
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/21/2007 11:49 Comments ||
Top||
Even as the Hurriyat team visiting Pakistan met president Pervez Musharraf and made appropriate 'peace noises', the main driver of terror in Jammu & Kashmir, Lashkar-e-Taiba, made it clear that it was not prepared to buy the argument that dialogue could replace guns. In an indication that it did not set much store from attempts at normalcy being mounted by Hurriyat, which has often been seen to be more than receptive to signals from Islamabad, LeT boss Hafiz Saeed said: "It is a historical fact that nations have always achieved their independence through sacrifices on the battlefront."
Promising to continue militancy in the Valley, he told a gathering after Friday prayers in Lahore that jehadis will "fully support the legitimate struggle for freedom of the Kashmiri people". This made it quite apparent that whatever the Hurriyet may say, the jehadis continue to see Kashmir as a religious and political cause that they are bent on achieving.
Saeed's statements were timed to offset, and even counter, the late-evening meeting of the moderate faction of Hurriyat with Musharraf. Contrary to Hurriyat's stand and the statements of Musharraf that elements hostile to the peace process should be discouraged and firmly dealt with, the LeT chief said the Kashmir issue cannot be resolved through back-channel diplomacy. The LeT founder warned Musharraf "to desist from stabbing the Kashmiris in the back in exchange of better relations with India".
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
Milk of a goat cures all According to daily Khabrain, a car mechanic Mohammad Ramazan in Kasur is using a strange goat as a messiah to cure all the diseases in the world. He printed an ad and distributed handbills in which he asserted that he bought a goat that has two tits that give milk. He gave this milk to a sick girl and she recovered immediately. A blind woman massaged her eyes with that milk and she gained her eyesight. He said this milk is the miracle of God. After this ad, a lot of sick people are coming to his house and he is collecting nazrana from these patients. He said he would build a mosque with the money.
"Where you gonna build it?"
"Monte Carlo."
No other sects in NWFP
According to daily Khabrain, the minister for religious affairs Amir Liaqat Ali said that NWFP maulanas want to divide the nation. He said, the government of NWFP doesnt like to see Maulana Muneeb ur Rehman as chairman of Central Ruet-e-Hilal committee. He said that experts of astonomy were consulted during the reign of righteous Caliphs and all the provincial and zonal Ruet-e-Hilal committees formed by NWFP government are illegal. He said Eid cant be celebrated following Saudi Arabia. He said all the sects are represented in central Ruet-e-Hilal committee while the zonal Ruet-e-Hilal committee of NWFP doesnt have ahle tashe or ahle hadith ulema.
Jamaat members getting salaries from NA
As reported in daily Khabrian, the leader of Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, and other 26 members of Jamaat Islami, havent informed the assembly secretariat about their decision of not taking their salaries. Only one member of Jamaat Islami. Mohammad Hussain Mehanti has informed the secretariat and the assembly secretary didnt transfer his salary into his account. The salary of Qazi Hussain Ahmad and one lac rupees of privileges have been transferred to Al Khidmat foundation. Other members who didnt inform the secretariat include Liaqat Baloch, Farid Ahmad Paracha, Hanif Aslam, Raheela Samia Qazi, Hafiz Suleman Butt, Abdul Akbar Chitrali and others.
Man raped by two Kuwaiti women
According to daily Nawa-i-Waqt, a higher court in Kuwait sentenced two women to seven years in prison for raping and beating a man. According to a newspaper, Alrai, the man, was beaten up and injected with drugs for potency. He presented his medical certificates that proved the sexual assault. Earlier the lower court awarded 15 years imprisonment to both the women.
Fatwa to kill female staff of NGOs
According to daily Jang, the chairperson of human rights commission Asma Jehangir, wrote a letter to interior minister Aftab Sher Pao in which she pointed to a fatwa issued by Mufti Khalid Shah of Dara Adam Khel to kill the women associated with NGOs and United Nation. International Red Cross and human rights organizations are termed as agents of Jews and West. Mufti Khalid asked the Muslim Umma to kill women worker of NGOs and called it a sacred duty of Muslim. He also urged Muslim to use heavy guns, destroy their houses, attack their cars and loot their homes. She also wrote that one maulana issued a fatwa in Hazara and warned all female NGO staff to leave the area. Asma Jehangir said these mullahs write their sect, name and address and paste their fatwa on the walls. NWFP government registered cases against them but is not taking any action against them. There were three women NGO workers killed during the year 2006.
Revenge of a Cobra
According to daily Express, a newly married couple died of snake bite. Hamad Butt and his wife Salma saw a couple of cobra snakes on the banks of Chenab. Hamad killed the female snake with a stone and the male snake ran away. After a while, when they were busy talking to each other, the same snake appeared before them and bit them. The couple died in a few hours.
Our emotions are hurt again
As reported in daily Express, The Cartoon Network has created a cartoon series with the character of the Prophet Moses to instigate the emotions of Muslims. The cartoon series that would destroy the religious thinking of children and would start from Sunday. The satanic plan by cartoon network has hurt the emotions of Muslims in Pakistan. People have started calling newspapers and said that cartoon of the prophet Moses are blasphemous. Some people asked the cable operators not to show cartoon network and asked the parents to watch the kids and not allow them to watch the channel.
UN resolutions are useless!
As reported in daily Express, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan who advocates Kashmir become a part of Pakistan, has said the United Nations resolutions have become redundant. He said Pakistan can leave the UN resolutions as a strategy when Bharat is stuck on Attot ang rhetoric and we are stuck with UN resolutions. He said we cant wait for another 50 years for a referendum for the right of self determination. He said the purpose of UN resolutions is to solve the Kashmir issue.
Womens bill will destroy households
As reported in daily Nawa-i-Waqt, a wife named Nasim hit her husband with a heavy stick and opened a wound in his head when he stopped her from going to bazaar. The injured husband, Razzaq, was brought to a hospital where he lamented that Womens Protection Bill is responsible for his wounds. He said now a lot of households would be destroyed because of this bill.
Old habits die hard
According to daily Khabrain, the provincial minister for religious affairs, Maulana Amanaullah Haqqani, has said the celebration of Eid on two days is an old issue and cant be solved in a few days. He said there is no example of Central Ruet-e-Hilal committee during the reign of the righteous Caliphs. If there was such a practice then they should inform us.
Mother of three marries a Pakistani boy
As reported in daily Express, the American lady Domana Mary Petit, who married a Pakistani boy Amir Khan after their love affair on the internet, was already married and had three children from her first husband. She said she has got a divorce from her first husband. She came to Pakistan and married Amir Khan with the consent of his parents. She submitted her marriage certificate and her statement in a civil court.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[17 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I've got a nasty cold. I'll take one order of magic goat milk to go.
Milk of a goat cures all
..and feta be gud ummmm...
*** Man raped by two Kuwaiti women
Earlier the lower court awarded 15 years imprisonment to both the women.
i wonder if Burkas were involved?
*****
Moby Serpent Allegory
#1) Hamad Butt and his wife Salma Butt saw a couple of Cobra Snakes on the banks of Chenab.
#2) Hamad Butt killed the female snake with a stone and the male snake ran away.
#3) After a while, when Mr. and Mrs. Butt were busy talking to each other, the same snake appeared before them and bit them.
#4) The Butt couple died in a few hours.
Moral: Don't ever talk to Butts or you'll get a serious case of the ass.
#4
Hamad killed the female snake with a stone and the male snake ran away. After a while...
the same snake appeared before them and bit them. The couple died in a few hours.
Must've been a Hindoo snake---A Muslem one would've just start looking for another female.
ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad district administration and Capital Development Authority (CDA) on Saturday demolished two mosques near the Islamabad Highway and Murree Road, after intelligence reports indicated they could be used to launch terrorist attacks.
Sources told Daily Times that the intelligence agencies had reported to the Interior Ministry that mosques in green areas near Murre Road and Islamabad Highway could be used by miscreants to target Perv VIPs and foreign dignitaries, who use these roads often to travel between the airport and their offices in the capital. There was also a raised threat of terrorist attacks because of Tuesdays air strike on a suspected militant compound in South Waziristan.
After receiving the intelligence reports, the Interior Ministry ordered the CDA and the district administration to demolish these mosques.
Over 300 religious leaders condemned the demolition of the mosques and alleged that the government had done so to appease the US and European countries. The clerics called an emergency meeting on this issue at Madni Mosque on Murree Road, at which Maulana Abdul Rauf and Qari Saeedur Rehman said the religious parties would seethe protest the demolitions on Wednesday.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
It's a start, demolish some more, they are dens where dangerous snakes are reared.
KATHMANDU - The US ambassador to Nepal has charged that Maoists are trying to keep sophisticated weapons despite their pledge to hand them over to the United Nations, newspaper reports said Saturday. Under a peace deal reached between the government and the Maoists, the Communist ex-rebels are to hand in their weapons to the UN for lockup.
The comments came just days after the United Nations and the Maoists announced the process of registering Maoists had begun in two main cantonments in south west Nepal. However, neither the UN nor the Maoists have disclosed the types and number of weapons being registered.
"What's this?"
"It's a sword."
"You call that a weapon?"
"Hey, it's made of steel!"
"Oh, okay, sorry, we'll put it down as a 'sophisticated weapon.' Next!"
The Maoists are trying to buy primitive and handmade weapons from India (on the) black market to put them in the UN containers and retain the sophisticated weapons, Kathmandu Post quoted Ambassador James F Moriarty as saying.
'cause they're thinking they're going to need them in the near future ...
Moriarty also said the Maoists had recruited a large number of fighters in November to inflate the number of Maoist fighters. Probably they didnt have 35,000 fighters and probably because they wanted to keep part of their ex-guerrillas out of the cantonments, The Post quoted him as saying. Moriarty, who has been a fierce critic of the Maoists, has asked the UN to make sure that real weapons and real Maoist combatants are in the cantonments.
The UN has declined to give the exact number and types of weapons the Maoists are handing in, saying the Maoists were sensitive about the issue.
Oh, you think?
The Maoists have also prevented the media from recording the event.
Let the Ghurkas and the RAB have ten minutes with these guys ...
The Maoists are currently confined to sev main cantonments and 21 satellite camps located across Nepal. Although the Maoists previously claimed there were 35,000 fighters, the figure is widely disputed by experts in the Nepalese capital.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
GUWAHATI, India - A motorcycle bomb killed two people and wounded seven in a crowded market in Indias troubled northeastern state of Assam on Saturday, police said. They said suspected rebels belonging to the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) were behind the explosion in Tinsukia town, about 600 km (370 miles) east of the states main city, Guwahati.
The bomb was kept on a motorbike on the roadside, a police officer told Reuters by telephone from Tinsukia. A man died on the spot while another succumbed to his injuries in a hospital, he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[18 views]
Top|| File under:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Four people were arrested with 6 kg (13.2 lb) of powerful explosives near a crowded railway station in Mumbai on Saturday, six months after a string of train bombings that killed 186 people in the financial hub. 
Tribal Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud has said this years spring offensive in Afghanistan will be even bloodier than last year. The mujahideen (holy warriors) will give a tougher fight this year than last year, he told Daily Times at a secret location in South Waziristan, after taking this correspondent on a tour of Kot Kalay, where an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp killed eight people on Tuesday.
The Taliban on Saturday rejected claims made by a captured spokesman that Taliban chief Mullah Omar was in Quetta under Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) protection, stressing that the man did not know the movements military secrets. 
Even as the Hurriyat team visiting Pakistan met president Pervez Musharraf and made appropriate 'peace noises', the main driver of terror in Jammu & Kashmir, Lashkar-e-Taiba, made it clear that it was not prepared to buy the argument that dialogue could replace guns. In an indication that it did not set much store from attempts at normalcy being mounted by Hurriyat, which has often been seen to be more than receptive to signals from Islamabad, LeT boss Hafiz Saeed said: "It is a historical fact that nations have always achieved their independence through sacrifices on the battlefront." 
According to daily Khabrain, a car mechanic Mohammad Ramazan in Kasur is using a strange goat as a messiah to cure all the diseases in the world. He printed an ad and distributed handbills in which he asserted that he bought a goat that has two tits that give milk. He gave this milk to a sick girl and she recovered immediately. A blind woman massaged her eyes with that milk and she gained her eyesight. He said this milk is the miracle of God. After this ad, a lot of sick people are coming to his house and he is collecting nazrana from these patients. He said he would build a mosque with the money. 
KATHMANDU - The US ambassador to Nepal has charged that Maoists are trying to keep sophisticated weapons despite their pledge to hand them over to the United Nations, newspaper reports said Saturday. Under a peace deal reached between the government and the Maoists, the Communist ex-rebels are to hand in their weapons to the UN for lockup.
GUWAHATI, India - A motorcycle bomb killed two people and wounded seven in a crowded market in Indias troubled northeastern state of Assam on Saturday, police said. They said suspected rebels belonging to the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) were behind the explosion in Tinsukia town, about 600 km (370 miles) east of the states main city, Guwahati.
