Group items tagged

As part of the strategic pivot unveiled in January, the United States will deploy 60 per cent of its warships in the Asia-Pacific, up from 50 per cent now. They will include six aircraft carriers and a majority of the U.S. navy's cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines.

"Make no mistake, in a steady, deliberate and sustainable way, the United States military is rebalancing and bringing an enhanced capability development to this vital region," Panetta told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore attended by civilian and military leaders from Asia-Pacific and Western nations.

reports last week in China's state-controlled media and online military websites suggested that the first of a new class of a stealthy littoral combat frigate, the type 056, had been launched at Shanghai's Hudong shipyard with three others under construction.Naval analysts said the new 1,700-tonne ship, armed with a 76mm main gun, missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes, would be ideal for patrolling the South China Sea.These new warships would easily outgun the warships of rival claimants, they said.

As part of his swing through Asia last week, Panetta also visited India and Vietnam in a bid to enhance security ties with two key regional powers that have not been traditional U.S. allies but are increasingly apprehensive about China's rise.At Vietnam's deep water port of Cam Ranh Bay, a key U.S. base during the Vietnam War, Panetta said the use of this harbour would be important to the Pentagon as it moved more ships to Asia.

Britain did not wait for the elections to announce action. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said the country would launch a scheme to provide cheap long-term funding to banks to encourage them to lend to businesses and consumers.

King said the euro zone's problems were causing a crisis of confidence in Britain that was leading to a self-reinforcing weaker picture of growth."The black cloud has dampened animal spirits so that businesses and households are battening down the hatches to prepare for the storms ahead," he said.

Faced with Greek defiance, officials said the euro zone would not tear up the main targets of the bailout no matter who wins the elections, but it might consider giving a new government in Athens some leeway on how it reaches them.

"The headline targets cannot be changed," one senior EU official told Reuters. "There could be some tweaks to the path to get there, but not the goals.

One euro-zone official said that the main concern, if SYRIZA overwhelmingly won the election, was the risk of large capital outflows from Greece if depositors worry their savings in euros could later be frozen or converted into new drachmas."It is not even about a bank run on Monday morning after the elections. People can now log on to Internet banking and make transfers on Sunday evening as well," an official said, explaining the rationale of the ministerial call.

Visiting Rome, Hollande called for the euro zone to adopt bold new mechanisms to insulate member states and their banks from market turmoil, such as a joint fund to pay down debt, putting him on a collision course with Berlin."We need imagination and creativity to find new financial instruments," Hollande told a news conference. "To deepen financial union, there are many options such as a financial transactions tax and joint debt issuance, including euro bonds, euro bills or a debt redemption fund."

However, Merkel rejected "miracle solutions" such as issuing joint euro bonds or creating a Europe-wide deposit guarantee scheme. Such proposals were "counterproductive" and would violate the German constitution, she told parliament.

She warned against overstraining the resources of Europe's biggest economy, saying: "Germany is putting this strength and this power to use for the well-being of people, not just in Germany but also t

Merkel and Sarkozy said they were sending a joint letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the G20 chairman, seeking to accelerate reforms in financial regulation.The letter also pushes for a global tax on financial transactions and agreement in principle on a levy on banks to pay for the cost of financial crises, Merkel said.

"We believe there is still room for diplomatic efforts and the parties concerned should intensify those efforts."

Speaking in Paris on Monday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he was open to the idea of sanctions - as a last resort. "Russia is ready, together with our other partners, to consider introducing sanctions" if there is no breakthrough in the negotiations, he told a news conference after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "These sanctions should be calibrated and smart. These sanctions should not target the civilian population," the Russian leader was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

Previous large spending increases could explain the smaller increase this year. "China has achieved its targets in the past by providing continuous double-digit budget increases," said Andrew Yang, an expert on China's military who is now Taiwan's deputy defence minister.

Many experts believe the actual amount spent by China on its armed forces is far higher than the published amount.

In a recently published book, called The China Dream, a senior officer in China's People's Liberation Army said the country should aim to build a major military force that could challenge the US this century. Other officers attending the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body that holds a meeting at the same time as the parliamentary session, rejected that idea.

Speaking at a joint Riyadh news conference with Mrs Clinton, Prince Saud said: "Sanctions are a long-term solution. They may work, we can't judge. "But we see the issue in the shorter term maybe because we are closer to the threat... So we need an immediate resolution rather than a gradual resolution."

Some regional experts believe neither sanctions nor engagement will work with Iran and have suggested a multi-pronged approach involving intense economic pressure from Iran's neighbours, our correspondent adds.

The Chinese "carry their responsibility" as one of the major world powers and "they need no suggestion from Saudi Arabia to do what they ought to do," Prince Saud said at a joint news conference with Clinton.

"Sanctions are a long-term solution (but) ... we see the issue in the shorter term because we are closer to the threat," Prince Saud said.    "If we want security for the region, it requires an Iran at peace and happy with themselves," he added.

Clinton's top assistant for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, told reporters travelling with her that China had an "important trading relationship" with the Saudi oil kingpin.    "We would expect them (the Saudis) ... to use their relationship in ways that can help increase the pressure that Iran feels," said Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs.

Clinton said the United States was not aiming to use military action to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions but rather seeking to build support for tough new sanctions at the UN Security Council.    She said the package Washington wanted adopted "will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran.

"We see the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament is being supplanted and Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship," she said.    "They are in charge of the nuclear programme."

Two years ago, Sarkozy already spoke of "failings” and “errors". But his entourage predicted before his trip to Kigali that he would not go as far as Belgium and the United States, who have both presented an apology.

The soured relations between the two countries hit a low ebb in late 2006 when Rwanda decided to sever diplomatic ties with France after a French judge questioned Kagame’s involvement in the death of Habyarimana. Rwanda responded by releasing a report accusing around 30 senior French political and military figures of complicity in the genocide. A series of rulings by the French legal system eventually reassured Kigali.

Al-Jazeera reported that Ahmadinejad also met Khaled Mash'al, the Damascus-based leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, and Ramadan Shallah of Islamic Jihad, both of which are supported by Tehran

Two years ago the military leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Damascus in an attack that was also blamed on Israel's secret service, the Mossad

Syria and Iran announced they were cancelling visa restrictions between their countries

Clinton said the US wanted Syria "generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran, which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States".

Obama has expressed hope that a new resolution can be agreed within weeks, before the end of spring, to maintain pressure on Iran. But European diplomats have warned the talks could take much longer. They suggest June might be a more realistic target.

the NPT review conference, which is going to be one of these agonizing, multilateral events

we don't say anything about U.S. forward-deployed systems in Europe, and we don't do that because we don't want to act unilaterally. This is an alliance issue and should be dealt with and we should achieve consensus within the alliance.

We have opportunities in NATO over the next year, in looking at the alliance's strategic concept, to talk about U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons, and we'll do that. It will begin very soon and continue throughout the year, looking at the Lisbon summit meeting in November.

Whether we'll have a multilateral negotiation, the NPR doesn't deal with that. We haven't addressed it as a government. I'll express my personal view on that: I don't think we're going to have a multilateral negotiation. (Chuckles.) When we were talking about INF systems in Europe, that wasn't a multilateral negotiation. I don't see it here. And it's not even clear whether the problem of Russian non-strategic weapons is amenable to arms-control kinds of solutions.

Connoisseurs of NPRs will not find the word reliance in this NPR. The last NPR said it was an objective of policy to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, and the services took the message, as did lots of other actors. We've said we're trying to reduce the roles and numbers. But where roles remain, deterrence has to be not only maintained but strengthened in the manner of broadening and diversifying

the Russians right now are in their modernization phase. They're well into it and working their way through what their next 30 years of delivery vehicles and weapons is going to look like. We haven't really entered it. We're just now starting to get into that side of the equation.

how do you keep the balance -- not from a weapons standpoint, but from a stability standpoint -- with China, Russia and the United States, with China getting at the cutting edge of technology and moving as quickly as they can? Maybe they don't have the number of warheads today, but you still have to pay attention. And how do you take then the Russian side of this equation, which is a drastic demographic reduction, yet looking at kind of the reverse of the Fulda Gap? They're worried about divisions to their south, divisions to their west. Weapons have a very different meaning to them today than they did in the Cold War.

The Chinese are trying to understand what their threat is and how they're going to handle deterrence, and we're trying to straddle and make sure that we don't unseat this balance.

That's why, for me, it's been so important to think beyond nuclear when you're thinking deterrence. Because I just don't think nuclear is enough, in the broad spectrum of threat that we'll face.

the president has come out and said as long as we have a need for our nuclear stockpiles, as long as other nations have them, he is committed to maintaining them. He is committed to revitalizing the infrastructure, the experimental capabilities, the buildings where these people work. Much of the infrastructure I've got, particularly the uranium/plutonium infrastructure, literally dates back to the early 1950s. They were designed in the '40s, built and started operating in 1952. So it's going to take us 10 years to get this up. So it takes a sustained effort, and that's what it's going to take.

Obviously, our forward-deployed systems in Europe are -- it's a political-military issue. And I understand that the NPR did not want to prejudice the discussions underway at NATO. But if I can just separate the military for a moment, is there a military mission performed by these aircraft-delivered weapons that cannot be performed by either U.S. strategic forces or U.S. conventional forces? CARTWRIGHT: No. (Scattered laughter.)

It doesn't anywhere say we're committed to reducing reliance on. We're committed to reducing the roles and reducing the salience of, internationally

On the NATO topic, I wish it were as simple. I would put a question back: what targets do NATO's weapons have? Not nuclear. Any weapon in NATO. An alliance that doesn't have an enemy -- (scattered laughter) -- so the argument about where nuclear weapons might be pointed is only a part of the argument.

The theme we carry in the NPR and that we're going to carry forward to Tolline (ph) and beyond is that nuclear sharing is what has been essential to NATO, in terms of the credibility of deterrence and assurance. And the choices NATO makes are interpreted by its members as being reflective of how committed those members are to their Article V obligations. And there are plenty of NATO's members who are worried that NATO would make a choice to abandon nuclear weapons and thus put at risk their ability to do Article V actions. And so when we've said in our policy goal we are interested in strengthening regional deterrence and reassurance of allies, these are two sides of the same coin

Where we try and lead NATO -- the president said about NATO, he was there a year ago, to listen and learn and we'll come back to lead. As we come back to lead on this NATO nuclear topic, we're going to bring the messages of burden and risk sharing, because these are essential to the -- uniquely to this alliance. The NPR talks about extended deterrence in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East. Uniquely to the European landscape is this risk and burden-sharing dimension. And it's a different way of think about the capabilities question.

as General Cartwright observed, the technical possibilities of breakthrough and breakout capabilities are there, but the ones that Russia and China most worry about are our possible breakout capabilities. And if we're serious about meeting their requirements for strategic stability, we need to do a better job than we have of putting all of this together in a comprehensive role and getting off of defensive mode and saying, oh, don't worry, missile defenses aren't pointed at you, and strategic stability is untroubled by our capabilities, and get on to a more solid foundation.

we've tried to engage Russia on missile defense. We have proposals for extensive cooperation in the area of missile defense. The Russians haven't been interested, so far, in engaging on that. And not to mention the difficulties of engaging with them on non-strategic forces.

We need to reassure our allies for -- because we're committed to do that, but also because for a nonproliferation reason, we don't want them to develop a -- to feel they have incentives to acquire their own deterrent capabilities.

I think this is a balanced report; this is not a revolutionary report. Some were hoping for more on declaratory policy. Some were hoping that we'd go for a no-first-use approach, say that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack. We weren't prepared to go there.

We believe there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons continue to play a role in deterring non-nuclear attack. We're prepared to state that as an objective, but not to say we're ready yet.

I think going farther faster would have been unsettling to some of our friends around the world. I think it would be unsettling to domestic audiences as well. And we -- to be frank, the administration had its sights set on gaining two-thirds of the U.S. Senate for ratification of START and the CTBT. And I think this document will move us toward the goals enunciated by the president without kind of upsetting the apple cart and making this difficult to have further progress.

it does seem to me that in this document, the U.S. is saying we withhold the right to use nuclear weapons against an Iran that has no nuclear weapons. And in making this particular threat, we're basically just extending the continuity from the Bush administration that keeps all military options on the table and, whether explicitly or implicitly, also had threatened Iran to use nuclear weapons against Iran that did not have nuclear weapons. So I guess the way I would end this question is, is this the right message for the Green movement in Iran, for the Brazils and the Turkeys of the world that this U.S., which says it's reducing the role of nuclear weapons, reserves the right to use this weapon of mass destruction against an Iran that does not yet have nuclear weapons? EINHORN: This negative security assurance was about assuring non-nuclear weapon states, party to the NPT in good standing with the NPT. It was not about threatening -- (chuckles) -- those that are not in good standing. I know -- the Iranians will try to capitalize, there'll be a lot of Iranian propaganda that this whole thing is about an implicit threat to Iran. It's not about an implicit threat to Iran.

we made clear in the NPR that countries that are not -- we're not increasing the likelihood of using nuclear weapons against countries that are not eligible to receive this pledge. The countries that are not covered by the pledge are simply not affected by it. It's not as if we've increased the threat to France or Russia or the U.K. or something like that. And neither have we increased the threat to North Korea or Iran. The situation is simply unaffected.

Or we're as serious about NPT membership as we are compliance, because the pledge is also not offered to Israel, India and Pakistan. But it seems like those three countries are in much better shape than Iran, even though Iran is partially in compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement.