India tests China Killer long-range ballistic muke missile

The launch makes India part of an elite club with intercontinental nuclear defence capabilites [AFP]

India has test launched its first long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of reaching deep into China and as far as Europe, with a scientist at the launch describing the mission as successful. "It has met all the mission objectives," S P Dash, director of the test range, told the Reuters news agency on Thursday. "It hit the target with very good accuracy." It took the missile about 20 minutes to hit its target somewhere near Indonesia in the Indian Ocean. The launch of the Agni V, which can carry nuclear warheads and has a range of 5,000km, thrusts the country into an elite club of nations with intercontinental nuclear capabilities. Only the UN Security Council permanent members - China, France, Russia, the US and Britain - along with Israel, have such long-range weapons. "The successful launch of Agni V missile is a tribute to the sophistications and commitment to national causes on the part of India's scientific technological community," Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, said. Singh said he hoped Indian scientists and technologists would in the future contribute a "lot more to promoting self reliance in defence and other walks of national life". 'Confidence boost' Al Jazeera's Prerna Suri, reporting from New Delhi, said the launch was "significant because Indian scientists have been working for years to get the programme off the ground". "It is the most strategic and ambitious programme this country has undertaken in recent years," she said. "What's important is that this missile has been completely indigenously produced and designed. It's cost the Indian government over $500m to do that." Harsh Pant, a defence expert at King's College, London, described the launch as a "confidence boost", adding that the mission "signalled India's arrival on the global stage [and] that it deserves to be sitting at the high table". But Richard Bitzinger, a military specialist at Nanyang Technological University in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera that India would need to carry out "several more tests" before it could declare Agni V missile operational. "It's not gonna happen overnight," he said. The launch came as India nears completion of a nuclear submarine that will increase its ability to launch a counter strike if it were attacked. Delhi insists its nuclear weapons programme is for deterrence only. One of the fast emerging economies known as the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - India is keen to play a larger role on the global stage and has been clamouring for a permanent seat on the Security Council. It has in recent years emerged as the world's top arms importer as it rushes to upgrade equipment for a large but outdated military. China's reaction There was no immediate criticism from world powers over the launch, which was flagged well in advance, but China noted the launch with disapproval. "The West chooses to overlook India's disregard of nuclear and missile control treaties," China's Global Times newspaper said in an editorial published before the launch, which was delayed by a day because of bad weather. "India should not overestimate its strength," said the paper, which is owned by the Chinese Communist Party's main mouthpiece the People's Daily. State-owned China Central Television said the missile "does not pose a threat in reality", enumerating some of its shortcomings, from a problem with guidance systems to its 50-ton-plus weight. CCTV said the missile would have to be fired from fixed, not mobile positions, making it more vulnerable to attack. Delhi has not signed the non-proliferation treaty for nuclear nations, but enjoys a de facto legitimacy for its arsenal, boosted by a landmark 2008 deal with the US. On Wednesday, NATO said it did not consider India a threat while the US state department urged restraint and said India's non-proliferation record was "solid". India lost a brief Himalayan border war with its larger neighbour, China, in 1962 and has since strived to improve its defences. In recent years, the government has fretted over China's enhanced military presence near the border. Experts said the launch could trigger a renewed push from within India's defence establishment to build a fully fledged  ICBM programme capable of reaching the Americas. "Policy-wise it becomes more complicated from now on, until Agni V, India really has been able to make a case about its strategic objectives, but as it moves into the ICBM frontier there'll be more questions asked," said Pant. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies Newscribe : get free news in real time  Related posts: India, Asia #1 world's top weapons importer! India Upgrades Its Military With China in Mind! India sees China as 'de facto competitor' India's increasing troop may go nowhere

Double standards are the stuff of the powerful?

Diplomatic double-talk

Behind The Headlines By BUNN NAGARA

Double-dealing and double standards are the stuff of the powerful in the world at large.

THERE is something of a double bind when a troubling situation and the common understanding of it are both flawed.

For example, the uprising in Syria and the opposition to a draft UN resolution calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step down have typically been misrepresented.

Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution backed by Western and Arab countries at the UN Security Council (UNSC) last weekend calling on Assad to step down. The usual recriminations about their “betrayal” of the Syrian people followed.

One allegation was that Russia and China were merely opposing the resolution for their own selfish interests. Both countries were said to have major investments in Assad’s Syria, so they would not upset Damascus.

But if regime change were to come anyway, Moscow and Beijing would be as savvy as anyone to invest in a new Syria.

According to some Western accounts, regime change would come sooner rather than later.

Then Russia and China were said to be anxious to block a Syrian uprising only because they feared a similar outcome at home.

However, governments have never had the problem of contradicting foreign and domestic policies. Besides, Syrian dissidents have no known links with Chechen or Uighur militants.

China was also said to have gone along with Russia’s objection because Beijing placed a higher priority in maintaining strong ties with Moscow than with Washington or London.

A slightly more nuanced interpretation of that argument was that Russia and China sought to counter yet another Western-led effort to use the Security Council as a rubber stamp to serve US-Israeli interests in West Asia.



Overall, Western fury at Russian and Chinese non-compliance portrayed their vetoes as abhorrent and aberrant.

In the process, other reasons were conveniently ignored.

Russia and China have reasons for vetoing the draft resolution, and these may include those cited above. But their main reason patently relates to their experience of having been caught out in similar hostile adventures before.

The Western camp has argued that the resolution did not authorise military action against the Syrian government. But given recent experience in other Muslim countries, that is neither an assurance nor a selling point for the resolution.

In December 2000, UNSC Resolution 1333 on Afghanistan was supported by Russia and the US. It was criticised by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and China and Malaysia (then a UNSC non-permanent member) abstained.

The reservations then were that the Afghan people would suffer most from the resolution, and that peace talks with the ruling Taliban would be scuppered. A year later, war came.

Several UNSC resolutions on Iraq later led to its illegal invasion and controversial occupation. China, France and Russia by then had serious reservations about such resolutions, with doubts about whether war could be authorised.

US and British diplomats assured the world that the latest Iraq resolution need not authorise war. War came nonetheless, on spurious grounds and with disastrous consequences.

By 2007, China and Russia had had enough of such Western diplomatic shenanigans. They both vetoed a resolution tabled by the US and Britain on Myanmar.

Then on to Libya in 2011: a resolution that was supposed to have authorised only a “no-fly zone” became a hostile military action to “protect civilians”, which in turn meant war – again.

It was another exercise in regime change, whatever official words were used for the effort: of a country “in breach of UN resolutions”, one’s “responsibility to protect”, or “remaining seized of the matter”.

By 2012, it would be perverse for Russia and China, or any other country outside the Western orbit of client states, to remain oblivious to the ulterior motives behind UNSC resolutions.

Days before Morocco had tabled the draft resolution on Syria, both Russia and China had already indicated their opposition to it, so there were no grounds for the sense of shock and horror that followed.

Much of Western media reporting on the issue continues to miss some salient points. By the time of last year’s Western-led attack on Libya, if not before, at least one important lesson should have become clear.

And that is how Western encouragement of local uprisings in several Muslim countries can doom dissidents relying on uncertain support from abroad.

With Libya, both sides were armed and not above using violence against civilians caught in the middle.

It also quickly became clear that the anti-government forces had no hope of winning without foreign military support. But at the same time, such support is illegal in attacking a sovereign state.

In the Western perspective, the case for providing military support was expressed as “not betraying” the people who had chosen to fight their government.

This would have the predictable effect of encouraging more militants in other countries to wage war against the state, regardless of their chances of victory and the undemocratic nature of their rebellion.

Now Syria has proven the point. Without foreign military assistance, the innocent and virtuous masses would be said to have been abandoned to mass slaughter.

And on it goes. It has the chilling and compelling effect of obliging, even blackmailing, all other countries to attack any particular country regarded as ripe for regime change.

With Syria, the government’s military strength to the opposition’s capacity to mount a physical challenge is 10 times that of Libya before. If the sponsors of the failed resolution asking Assad to go quietly still insist it does not require war to be effective, they must be lying.

Their intelligence agencies should have informed them of the odds on the ground in Syria by now. Russia and China have already called their bluff.