US, Pakistan stumble in private talks over drones

US, Pakistan stumble in private talks over drones

WASHINGTON: A US offer to supply Pakistan with its own fleet of surveillance drone aircraft delighted Islamabad a year ago but now threatens to turn into another source of friction between the two nations.

The offer was made by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates during a trip to Islamabad in January 2010 but talks have failed to gain traction, with Pakistan privately voicing concern about what it says are exorbitant prices and a snail-pace delivery timeline.

A US military official in Islamabad said Washington was still working with Pakistan to decide what pilotless drone system its army needed. A Pakistani official familiar with the matter denied that was the hold-up.

“It’s not because of product choice, that we’re unable to make a decision,” the Pakistani official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The negotiations were delayed because of two issues. One is the delivery timeframe, the other is the price.”

The Pakistani official said the United States quoted a price well above market value for the surveillance drones and is stipulating that it may take up to three years for delivery.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the details of the talks but a spokeswoman said both sides were working hard to provide “the capability they need in order to be successful in this counterinsurgency effort.”

The aircraft would be delivered as quickly as possible, once a final decision is made, she said.

The disagreement comes at a delicate moment in US relations with Pakistan. Washington wants Islamabad to do more to drive Taliban militants from sanctuaries used as launchpads for attacks on US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

The White House last year accused Pakistan of being unwilling to aggressively pursue Afghan Taliban militants. US officials said elements of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) were maintaining contact or even supporting the Taliban and its allies.

The CIA withdrew its top officer from Pakistan after his name was deliberately leaked, allegedly by elements of the ISI, US officials said in December.

The Pakistani official did not link the snag in negotiations over the drones to any tensions between Islamabad and Washington, however. US officials said both sides were still working to complete the project.

Overpriced?

Gates offered Pakistan 12 Shadow drones, manufactured by AAI Corporation, a unit of Textron Systems. They are not the weaponized versions being used by the CIA to track and kill al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Pakistan but are used strictly for surveillance and intelligence gathering.

The Pakistani official questioned why the drones could not be supplied more quickly, given that the aim was to bolster Pakistan’s ability to battle insurgents.

“We need it immediately because we’re in the middle of this war on terrorism,” the official said.

Pakistani officials make no secret about their desire to have attack drones as well as the unarmed models.

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China ramps up pressure over Kashmir

China ramps up pressure over Kashmir

By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A recent report in the Chinese media describing the Sino-Indian border as being 2,000 kilometers long, roughly 1,500 km shorter than that defined by India, has evoked an alarmed response among sections of the Indian strategic community.

The "missing 1,500 km" from the definition of the Sino-Indian border is seen to be a clear pointer to Beijing's hardening position, not only on its long-standing boundary dispute with India but also on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). While India holds about 45% of J&K territory and Pakistan controls 35%, China occupies about 20% (including Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam Valley, ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963).

A Beijing-datelined Xinhua news agency report of an official briefing by China's Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue on the eve of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's recent visit to India triggered the flap. "China and India share a 2,000-km-long border that has never been formally demarcated," the report said. India describes the border as being 3,488 km. 

The different positions were made even more explicit by the Global Times, an English-language newspaper published by the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. In an interview with Global Times, India's ambassador to China, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, spoke of the "long common border of 3,488 kilometers" between the two countries. But a comment by the editors of Global Times in parentheses said: "There is no settled length of the common border. The Chinese government often refers to the border length as being 'about 2,000 kilometers'."

Reports in state-owned media have been describing the border as being 2,000 km for at least a year now.

The roughly 1,500 km-long shortfall in the Chinese perception is believed to refer to the Sino-Indian boundary in J&K. "China apparently no longer treats the line of nearly 1,600 km separating Jammu and Kashmir on the one hand and Xinjiang and Tibet on the other as a border with India," strategic affairs expert C Raja Mohan wrote in the Indian Express. That is, it does not recognize Kashmir to be part of India. 
Beijing is questioning India's locus standi to discuss J&K’s border with China, observes B Raman, a retired director in India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). In essence, it is seeking to exclude discussion of the western sector of the disputed Sino-Indian boundary with India. The western sector includes the large chunk of Indian territory, Aksai Chin, in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir that China occupied in 1962.

Besides, China "wants to change the format of the border talks in order to keep it confined bilaterally to the eastern and middle sectors and expand it to a trilateral issue involving India, China and Pakistan in the western sector," Raman wrote recently.

China has become increasingly assertive in its questioning of India's sovereignty over J&K. Since 2008, it has been issuing visas on a separate sheet of paper to residents of Jammu and Kashmir rather than stamping the visa in their passports, as is the norm with other Indian citizens. In August last year, China also denied a visa to Lieutenant General B S Jaswal - commander of the Indian army's Northern Command, which includes Kashmir - for an official visit to China, on the grounds that he "controlled" a "disputed area".

Besides, over the past year, Beijing has been reaching out to the Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella organization of Kashmiri separatist outfits. In March 2010, for instance, Chinese Foreign Affairs director Ying Gang met with Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Geneva on the sidelines of the 13th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Besides questioning India's sovereignty over Kashmir, China has been endorsing Islamabad's control over the part of Kashmir it has administered since 1947. 

It was with India that the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, signed an Instrument of Accession in October 1947. However, only 45% of the territory of the former princely state is in India's hands today,roughly 35% remaining under Pakistani administration and another 20% under Chinese control. The territory under Chinese occupation includes Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam Valley that Pakistan gifted to China in 1963.

In the Northern Areas of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, China is involved in the construction of several infrastructure projects, including roads, hydroelectric power projects, dams, expressways, bridges and telecommunication facilities. During Wen's recent visit to Pakistan, the two countries signed a US$275 million agreement for repair and expansion of the Karakoram Highway. Earlier in September, Beijing underlined its support to Islamabad's territorial claims over parts of Pakistan-administered Kashmir when it described the Northern Areas as "a northern part of Pakistan".

The India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir predates the People's Republic of China (PRC). India and Pakistan had already fought their first war over Kashmir when the PRC came into being. Initially, China took its cues from the Soviet Union on the issue. It described the conflict as a Western creation and maintained that the US and Britain were hoping to make Kashmir a Western base.
China took a "neutral position" in the 1950s. It opposed foreign arbitration on the Kashmir issue, which pleased India. At the same time, it did not endorse Delhi's claims over Kashmir. Fraying Sino-Soviet relations and Moscow's overt support to Jammu and Kashmir as "an inalienable part of the Republic of India", as well as concerns that its backing of India would push Pakistan into a closer embrace of the US, seem to have prompted it to adopt a more "neutral position" between India and Pakistan on Kashmir.

With Sino-Indian relations deteriorating from 1959 onwards, China began tilting towards Pakistan. It signed a border agreement with Pakistan. Since this dealt with areas that constituted Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the agreement amounted to a de facto Chinese recognition of Pakistan's control over this area. Although it subsequently denied such recognition, describing this as "provisional" and "pending settlement of the Kashmir dispute", a joint communique issued at the end of prime minister Zhou Enlai's visit to Pakistan in February 1964 was a strong endorsement of the Pakistani position. It urged a solution of the dispute "in accordance with the wishes of the people of Kashmir". India is opposed to a plebiscite in Kashmir.

By the mid/late 1970s, China began advocating a status quo on Kashmir. Support for the Kashmiris' right to self-determination was toned down. In 1976, in his speech before the UN General Assembly, Chinese foreign minister Chia Kuan-Hua omitted naming Kashmir in a list of territories where the right to self-determination had not been exercised. It is believed that China's own troubles with separatism and improving ties with India prompted its shrinking support on self-determination.

With Sino-Indian rapprochement gathering momentum in the 1990s, China began describing Kashmir as a bilateral matter to be resolved by India and Pakistan through peaceful means. On his visit to India in 1996, president Ziang Zemin called on India and Pakistan to set aside contentious issues and build a cooperative relationship. During the brief Kargil conflict in 1999, China called on India and Pakistan to respect the Line of Control that separates Pakistani- and Indian-administered Kashmir. These were seen as signs of Beijing taking a neutral position on Kashmir again.

China has never accepted India's sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir, even over the part that is under its control. After all, if it did it would mean giving up the roughly 43,180 square kilometers of territory that is currently under its control. However, it had avoided provoking India on the matter publicly. This has changed in recent years, with Beijing being "deliberately provocative" on Kashmir. 

India is not letting the repeated provocations go unchallenged. After all, the territorial integrity of the country is a core concern of the Indian state. A couple of months ago, in his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, India's External Affairs Minister S M Krishna did some tough talking. According to officials quoted by the Hindu, for the first time India drew a parallel between "the territorial red lines" of the two countries.

Krishna reportedly told Yang that just as India had been sensitive to its concerns over Tibet and Taiwan, Beijing too should be mindful of Indian sensitivities on Jammu and Kashmir. The message that India is sending is that if China questions India's sovereignty over Kashmir, India will question Beijing's sovereignty over Tibet and Taiwan. 
Delhi has indicated that Krishna's warning was to be taken seriously. The joint communique issued at the end of Wen's visit to India made no reference to India's commitment to a "one china policy". This is the first time since 1988 that a summit-level joint communique has made no mention of the policy. Instead, both sides agreed to show "mutual respect and sensitivity for each other's concerns and aspirations".

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

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Israel soldier killed in 'friendly fire' at Gaza border

An Israeli soldier has been killed and four others injured by so-called friendly fire near to the Gaza border, the Israeli military says.

The incident happened while the soldiers were involved in a clash with Palestinian militants in Gaza.
The army said the group had been trying to plant explosives underneath the security fence along the border.
The clash follows a month of increased tension along the Gazan border with frequent exchanges of fire.
Witnesses in Gaza earlier told news agencies they had heard loud explosions close to the border, a short distance from the Nirim kibbutz on the Israeli side.
The Israeli military initially said four soldiers had been injured.
But they later said the men, who were part of a group patrolling the border, had been hit by Israeli fire. It also said one had died.
"The soldiers were hit by a stray mortar shell fired by Israeli forces as they engaged with Palestinian militants along the border," an army spokesman said.
The army said it was investigating the incident.
Increased activity Earlier this week, two Palestinian men were shot dead at the Gaza border - Israel said they had been attempting to break through the security fence but this could not be independently verified.
In recent weeks there has been an increase in activity around the border area, with Palestinians firing rockets into Israel, and the Israeli army carrying out regular air strikes on Gaza.

Israel says it holds Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, wholly responsible for all of the rockets fired across the border.
But the BBC's Jon Donnison in the West Bank says many of the attacks are carried out by smaller militant groups, and it is unclear whether Hamas has the power to prevent them.
Earlier on Friday, Israeli soldiers shot dead an elderly Palestinian man in his bed, in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Amr Qawasme, who was in his 60s, was killed in what is thought to have been a case of mistaken identity during a series of raids to capture members of Hamas.
He was neighbour of a Hamas member who had been released from prison the day before.
Israel said Mr Qawasme was innocent and that it regretted the incident. An investigation is being carried out.

North Korea renews South overture

The North said it would reopen a liaison office near the border

North Korea says it wants to reopen talks with the South - the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures.

The North's reunification committee issued a statement calling for "unconditional and early" talks.
Seoul officials said they would review the latest

North Korea says it wants to reopen talks with the South - the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures.

The North's reunification committee issued a statement calling for "unconditional and early" talks.
Seoul officials said they would review the latest proposals from Pyongyang. The South dismissed a similar offer earlier this week as "propaganda".
The sinking of a Southern warship last March sparked a dramatic rise in tension on the peninsula.
The Cheonan was apparently sunk by a Northern torpedo, with the loss of 46 lives. The North denies the attack.
Since then, the South has irked the North by holding large-scale military exercises close to the maritime border.
On 23 November, the North infuriated the South by shelling one of its islands and killing four people.
But in the past week, the North has shifted away from statements threatening war and retaliation, to issuing offers of talks and peace overtures.
"The South Korean authorities should discard any unnecessary misgiving, open their hearts and positively respond to the North's proposal and measure," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said on Saturday.
The committee suggested that the talks should take place later in January or early February.
The committee also said the North would reopen a liaison office with the South at a joint factory-complex just north of the demilitarised zone that divides the peninsula.
In response, Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told the Associated Press news agency that the statement would be considered, but noted that no formal request had been received.

Chinese businessman bids £5m for UK's HMS Invincible

Invincible is the sixth ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name

A UK-based Chinese businessman has bid £5m for the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, which is being auctioned.

Lam Kin-bong - who owns restaurants in the West Midlands - has said he wants to turn the former warship into an international school in China.
He said if he was not allowed to tow it to China he would instead try to berth the stripped-out carrier in Liverpool.
Several bids have been received since Invincible was put up for sale on a government internet auction website.
The vessel, which saw action in the Falklands War, Gulf and Balkans and was based in Portsmouth, was decommissioned in 2005. It was put up for sale on the edisposals website and was expected to fetch about £2m.
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Invincible's engines and many other parts had been salvaged and it was expected to be sold for scrap. The carrier has been stripped of anything that might be of military use and the blueprints of the ship will not be sold with it.
'Purely commercial' Mr Lam, who began as a chef and now owns the Wing Wah chain of Chinese restaurants, is also a lawmaker in the city of Zhuhai, in southern China.
He told the South China Morning Post that the bid - entered via his Zhuhai-based company Sunway Yacht Limited - was purely commercial.
If successful in buying the carrier he told reporters he wanted to tow the vessel to Zhuhai and berth it at a marina he is building in the city. He said it would cost £11m to buy the Invincible, tow and convert it.
"My intentions are purely commercial and have nothing to do with the military," he told the English-language newspaper.
If the vessel could not be taken to China his second preference would be to base it in Liverpool and turn it into a school "to boost the understanding of China and the Chinese in Britain".
Mr Lam said he had spoken to the Chinese Embassy in London about the bid and received a supportive response.
The restauranteur moved to London nearly 20 years ago, then to Birmingham where he helped set up the Wing Wah chain of restaurants, which he runs with his wife.
Earlier this week the MoD confirmed a "number of bids" had been received for the carrier and a preferred bidder would be announced once terms had been agreed.
Invincible was laid down at Vickers' shipyard in Barrow in 1973 and launched by the Queen in 1977.
The ship served in the 1982 Falklands War, deploying Harrier fighter aircraft against Argentine forces.
It is one of the navy's three Invincible class anti-submarine warfare carriers, along with HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious.
Ark Royal is to be decommissioned this month and HMS Illustrious in 2014.
The ships will be replaced by two new carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, which are expected to enter service by the end of the decade.

China military modernisation gathers pace

The leaked pictures of China's stealth plane have once again put the spotlight on China's military modernisation.

The US has the world's only operational stealth fighter, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, and has been playing down the images that appear to show a working prototype.
But they are yet another sign of the shifting balance brought about by the rise of the country's economic power.
Their emergence coincides with a Chinese general's call to double official military spending, against a background of wider cuts in military budgets in industrialised countries caused by the global financial crisis.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - who is due to start his long-delayed visit to Beijing on Sunday - says the Pentagon wants to make further cuts of nearly $80bn (£51bn) over the next five years.
The US and its allies have played down any possibility of the early deployment by China of such an advanced aircraft.
But they have sounded the alarm about the expansion of Beijing's military capabilities, especially its Air Force, Navy and the Second Artillery Corps that controls China's ballistic missiles and nuclear arsenal.
Japan last month defined China as its main military concern, citing Beijing's increased assertiveness in the East and South China Seas.
More spending Beijing insists its military modernisation poses a threat to no one.

China has increased military funding as its economy has grown

The older generation of China's military used to take pride in having seized power from the ruling Kuomingtang Party in 1949 with "millet and rifles".
But three modern wars in other parts of the world have hardened the resolve of China's top brass to catch up militarily.
The conflict between the UK and Argentina nearly 30 years ago pushed the late leader Deng Xiaoping to slash one million army personnel so as to use the then limited military budget on improving hardware.
The two Gulf Wars further demonstrated the technological superiority of the US and its allies, and spurred Chinese leaders on a new drive to "informatise" the military by integrating new technology into equipment and operations.
China's official military budget quadrupled between 1999 and 2009 as the country's economy grew.
Last year, China announced a smaller-than-usual 7.5% increase to $76.3bn, causing quite a backlash among China's hard-line generals.
'Special requirements' To be sure, the US defence budget is still the biggest in the world at around $700bn, but China's is the second largest and the rate of increase may well go up this year.
In an article published in a Chinese Communist Party publication this week, General Jiang Luming, head of the military economics unit at China's National Defence University, called for "maximising national interest" by doubling China's military funding to 2.8% of GDP, which he said was the average of 132 countries since the end of the Cold War.
He said this was needed to meet "special security requirements" - an apparent reference to preparing for eventual reunification with Taiwan, safeguarding key interests overseas and offshore, and China being a socialist country without any military allies.
This last issue is compounded by the arms embargo imposed by the European Union following the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The Chinese government has been lobbying to get the sanctions lifted without success.
On various occasions, Chinese officials have said the 21-year-old EU arms embargo forces China to invest more in its own military research and development.
Perhaps Russia is the only country China could turn to for advanced military and space technology. But China seems to be learning very fast.
Some analysts believe the pupil is overtaking the teacher in many areas

China stealth plane still 'years away', says Pentagon

Photos of a possible Chinese-made stealth aircraft were discussed in China's state-run media

The US is playing down pictures that appear to show a working prototype of a Chinese stealth aircraft, invisible to radar.

The images - first published on websites - show what looks like a stealth fighter on a taxi run.
Beijing has not commented on whether the pictures - published ahead of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates' visit later this week - are genuine.
The Pentagon says China is still years away from deploying a stealth aircraft.
In late 2009 the deputy head of China's air force, General He Weirong, said the country's stealth fighter would be ready sometime between 2017 and 2019, reports said.
But US director of naval intelligence Vice Admiral David Dorsett said that it would be "years" before China's new fighter would be operational.
"Developing a stealth capability with a prototype and then integrating that into a combat environment is going to take some time," he said.

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The leaked photos of the prototype aircraft first appeared on military websites and blogs. They were said to have been taken at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute.

The images were then discussed in the Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper, in both its Chinese and English-language editions, although no comment was made on their authenticity.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper said China could begin test flights of the stealth jet as soon as this month, citing unidentified Chinese military sources.
Military build-up The world's only operational stealth fighter is the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, but Russia is also known to be working on its own prototype.
BBC defence correspondent Nick Childs says the aircraft certainly bears a superficial resemblance to the latest US stealth designs - and that may spook some in Washington.

And it will add to the concerns of those who have been warning especially of the increasing reach and capabilities of China's air force and navy, he adds.

The US has been watching closely as China increases its military capacity - in particular, its development of a so-called "carrier killer" missile, a land-based system which could sink an aircraft carrier from up to 1,800 miles (2,900km) away.
US battle groups - including aircraft carriers - are stationed in the South China Sea.
And in August, the Pentagon reported that China had been expanding its nuclear arsenal and submarine force, as well as upgrading its land-based missiles.