Russian Navy to replace warship policing Somali waters after December 2008
A Russian destroyer will be sent to the Horn of Africa in December to take over from a missile frigate currently protecting civilian ships from Somali pirate attacks in the region, a Navy official said on Thursday. The Northern Fleet’s Neustrashimy (Fearless) frigate will continue to escort commercial vessels through the dangerous waters until the end of December, when the Pacific Fleet destroyer Admiral Vinogradov will take over, the high-ranking source told reporters.
The Admiral Vinogradov will arrive in the area in three weeks. After its service in Somali waters, the Neustrashimy will return to her home port of Severomorsk. The official said that all technical equipment and weaponry on board the Neustrashimy are functioning properly. During the current mission in the Gulf of Aden, the Neustrashimy has so far escorted six convoys, comprising a total of 20 ships with tonnage of almost 570,000.
Russian Navy commander Vladimir Vysotsky said on Sunday that warships from all of the Navy’s fleets will be involved in measures to fight piracy in the Horn of Africa region. Captain 1st Rank Oleg Gurinov, on board the Neustrashimy, told RIA Novosti that the ship would remain until the end of December to protect commercial vessels from pirate attacks.
Russia dispatched the Neustrashimy to the region in October, due to a surge in pirate attacks.
According to the UN, Somali pirates have attacked over 120 ships so far this year, resulting in the seizure of 39 vessels and the capture of at least 600 merchant seamen for ransom. There are 280 merchant seamen from 14 different ships currently being held by Somali pirates. The east African nation has been without a functioning government since 1991 and has no navy to police its coastline.
India signs contracts for 80 MI-17 choppers with Russia
In a boost to the sagging defence relationship between India and Russia, the two nations today signed a contract for supply of 80 MI-17V-5 medium lift helicopters for the Indian Air Force (IAF).
Valued at USD one billion, the agreement between the two sides comes at a time when New Delhi and Moscow are squabbling over several defence related deals signed earlier such as the escalating costs of Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier refit and the technology transfer for the T-90 tanks.
However, they agreed to move ahead and resolve all contentious issues in military cooperation, including the Russian demand for additional USD 2 billion dollars for the repair and refit of Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier and the sharing of technical knowhow for the T-90s.
The MI-17 deal had been clinched just before Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev’s state visit here during a meeting of the High Level Monitoring Committee headed by Defence Secretary Vijay Singh and Russian Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation Director Mikhail Dmitriev here on Tuesday.
The Cabinet Committee on Security too had given its go-ahead to acquisition of the helicopters at its meeting on Wednesday.
The helicopter contract was signed here by Defence Ministry’s Director General (Acquisitions) Sashi Kant Sharma and Rosoboronexport Director General A P Isaykin after the officials talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Medvedev.
Russia to Build Four Nuclear Reactors at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant
India and Russia would sign an agreement to build four reactors at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, the Russian nuclear power chief said Tuesday. The bilateral agreement, initialled in February 2008, will be signed during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s official visit to India Dec 4-6.
‘We plan to sign on Friday an intergovernmental agreement with India to build another four reactors for the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, and envisaging cooperation at new sites,’ said Sergei Kiriyenko, who heads the state nuclear power corporation Rosatom.
A spokesman for the Rosatom said that Russia and India could also sign an agreement to supply Russian nuclear fuel to Indian nuclear power plants.
Atomstroyexport, Russia’s nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, has been building two reactors for the Kudankulam plant in the southern province of Tamil Nadu since 2002 in line with a 1988 deal between India and the Soviet Union and an addendum signed 10 years later.
Atomstroyexport, established in 1998, has completed or is working on reactors in Iran, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and China.
India, Russia to Intensify Cooperation in Counter-Terror Efforts
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is scheduled to visit New Delhi this week, today spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the two agreed to intensify bilateral co-operation in anti-terror efforts in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
Just back from his Latin American tour, Medvedev expressed solidarity and sympathy with the people of India and backed the steps being taken by the Indian leadership to overcome the consequences of massive terror attack, a Kremlin release said.
In their telephonic conversation both leaders have agreed to intensify bilateral co-operation in anti-terror efforts and intend to discuss this issue at their forthcoming summit as well as within the framework of Indo-Russian Joint Working Group on combating international terrorism, it said.
The two leaders also discussed ‘some other aspects’ of the preparations for New Delhi summit.
Russia on Friday said there were no plans to postpone President Dmitry Medvedev’s maiden visit to India, unless New Delhi makes such a proposal, in view of the unprecedented terror attacks in Mumbai.
Medvedev is scheduled to hold an annual summit with Prime Minister Singh and attend the closing ceremony of the Year of Russia in New Delhi on December 5.
NSG to be Expanded, Deployed Across Top Metros
In the wake of deadly terror strikes in Mumbai, Government will bolster the strength of the country’s National Security Guard and enact legislation to strengthen existing anti-terror laws, a senior aide to President Pratibha Patil said today.
"A Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting would be held on Tuesday, which will take up the issue of deployment of NSG in places like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, where there is a need for beefing up security," Christy Fernandez, Secretary to the President, told reporters accompanying Patil here.
He said the move behind wider-deployment of NSG, which is currently based in New Delhi only, was to reduce the time taken for their induction in emergent situations.
"These will be the main focus in the meeting of the CCS," Fernandez said.
He said the President, who is currently on a two-nation tour and had arrived in Indonesia, was keeping in constant touch with authorities back home to monitor the situation.
Fernandez said the CCS meeting might also consider other legislative measures to strengthen the existing terror-related laws to make them more stringent and effective.
Navy, Coast Guard and Police Meet for Improving Inter Services Coordination
In the wake of Mumbai terror strikes by gunmen who gained access through the sea route, a high-level meeting today decided on better coordination between Navy, Coast Guard and Police to avoid recurrence of such incidents.
The meeting convened by Home Minister Shivraj Patil and attended by top officials of various forces and agencies, also discussed the security measures to be taken along the coastline in view of the fact that there were 12 major ports and 180 minors ports in the country.
Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, Coast Guard Chief Admiral R F Contractor, Army Vice Chief Lt Gen M L Naidu and Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Home Ministry were among those who attended the meeting.
U.S. Intelligence Focuses on Pakistani Group as Substantial Evidence Emerge
American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai.
The officials cautioned that they had reached no firm conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. Nevertheless, they said that evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to a role for Lashkar-e-Taiba or possibly another group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which also has a track record of attacks against India.
The officials requested anonymity in describing their current thinking and declined to discuss specifics of the intelligence that they said pointed to Kashmiri militants. In the past, the American and Indian intelligence services have used communications intercepts to tie Kashmiri militants to terrorist strikes. Indian officials may also be gleaning information from at least one captured gunman who participated in the Mumbai attacks.
According to one Indian intelligence official, during the siege the militants have been using non-Indian cellphones and receiving calls from outside the country, evidence that in part led Indian officials to speak publicly about the militants’ external ties.
Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any responsibility on Thursday for the terrorist strikes. American intelligence agencies have said that the group has received some training and logistical support in the past from Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., and that Pakistan’s government has long turned a blind eye to Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in the Kashmir region, a disputed territory over which India and Pakistan have fought two wars.
Officials in Washington said Friday that there was no evidence that the Pakistani government had any role in the attacks. But if evidence were to emerge that the operation had been planned and directed from within Pakistan, that would certainly further escalate tensions between India and Pakistan, bitter, nuclear-armed rivals. It could also provoke an Indian military response, even strikes against militants’ training camps.
American and Indian officials were pursuing the possibility that the attackers arrived off the coast of Mumbai in a large ship and then boarded smaller boats before initiating their attack.
An American counterterrorism official said there was strong evidence that Lashkar-e-Taiba had a “maritime capability” and would have been able to mount the sophisticated operation in Mumbai.
Senior Bush administration officials sought to keep the tensions from boiling over on Friday by maintaining steady contact with Indian officials. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by phone with Pranab Mukherjee, India’s foreign minister, and one of Ms. Rice’s deputies spoke with the Indian foreign secretary.
In what was seen as a sign of Pakistan’s concern about a possible Indian response, Pakistani officials announced Friday that the head of the I.S.I. would go to India to help the Indian government with its investigation. On Friday evening, however, Pakistani officials indicated that a lower-level I.S.I. representative might make the trip.
American and Indian officials have for years blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for a campaign of violence against high-profile targets throughout India, including the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and an August 2007 strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad. At times, Indian officials have also said Jaish-e-Muhammad was responsible for the attack on Parliament.
That attack prompted the Bush administration to try to freeze Lashkar-e-Taiba’s assets and press Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president at the time, to crack down on the group’s training operations in Pakistan.
A State Department report released this year called Lashkar-e-Taiba “one of the largest and most proficient of the Kashmiri-focused militant groups.” The report said that the group drew financing in part from Pakistani expatriates in the Middle East, and that it used a front organization called Jamaat ud-Daawa to coordinate charitable activities, like relief for the victims of the October 2006 earthquake in Kashmir.
The report said the actual size of the group was unknown, but estimated it at “several thousand” members.
Recently, some of the group’s operations have shifted from Kashmir to Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and even to Afghanistan to attack American troops. American officials and terrorism experts said the group had not sent large numbers of operatives into Afghanistan, but had embedded small teams with Taliban units to gain fighting experience.
“Afghanistan is an operating war zone, so they can get active training as the Kashmir front has slowed down a bit,” said Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
The group is believed by experts to have at least a loose affiliation with Al Qaeda. In March 2002, a Qaeda lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in a Lashkar-e-Taiba safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, according to the State Department report.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is not known to have singled out Westerners in past terrorist attacks, as the gunmen in Mumbai seem to have done. But one counterterrorism official said Friday that the group “has not pursued an exclusively Kashmiri agenda” and that it might certainly go after Westerners to advance broader goals.
Even as a Kashmiri connection to the attacks began to emerge on Friday, American officials said they were puzzled by some developments. For instance, they said they knew next to nothing about a group called the Deccan Mujahedeen, which issued a claim of responsibility for the attacks.
Terrorism experts have said there is no evidence of that group’s involvement in past strikes, and they speculated that another group fabricated the name to mask the responsibilities.
Leave Your Comments