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India is expected to sharply hike its defence spending, despite peace talks with rival Pakistan, as it goes on a shopping spree for new military hardware to update its ageing arsenal, analysts say.
   India, one of the world’s biggest arms buyers with one million-plus troops, is looking to buy 126 new jet fighters to replace an accident-prone fleet of Russian-built MiGs, six new submarines from France, an anti-missile system from the United States and rocket launchers from Russia.
   ‘India has not seen modernisation over a 10-year period,’ said Kapil Kak, a former air marshal and director of the Centre for Strategic Studies.
   ‘The defence ministry has to balance this and so we think annual spending of 2.75 to three per cent of (India’s estimated 650-billion-dollar gross domestic product) over the next 20 years can make up for this serious mistake,’ he said.
   The defence budget rose by almost 18 per cent to 770 billion rupees (17.6 billion dollars) in this fiscal year to March 2005 as India went on spending binge. This made up about 17 per cent of the overall budget.
   The country bought the Phalcon radar system from Israel for 1.1 billion dollars, a used aircraft carrier from Russia for 1.5 billion dollars and 66 Hawk jet trainer planes from Britain for 1.45 billion dollars.
   ‘Contractual obligations will need a 25 to 30 per cent additional allocation in the budget but even with this hike, our military spending will be lower, compared to China’s 5.5 per cent (of GDP) or the US six percent,’ Kak said.
   He noted the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led government ordered billions of dollars in new equipment before losing power in May 2004.
   India’s defence forces have asked for a 40 per cent increase in spending for the financial year starting April 1, more than 10 times the amount spent on health and education, to pay for new weapons including the Patriot anti-Missile system from the United States, a senior military official said.
   ‘That’s unlikely to happen but we’re looking at an increase of 25 per cent this fiscal year,’ the official, who did not want to be identified, said.
   India and Pakistan faced off with a million troops on their border in 2002 after an attack on India’s parliament in December 2001 by suspected Pakistan-backed militants.

Israel ordered the resumption of military operations against the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad Saturday, after evidence emerged linking it to a deadly Tel Aviv bombing that cast a shadow over fledgling progress in the peace process.
   The Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, also hit out at Syria, which long played host to Islamic Jihad leaders, accusing it of involvement in Friday night’s blast, but his comments were roundly rebuffed by Damascus.
   The Palestinian leadership had earlier accepted assurances by the main armed factions, including Islamic Jihad, that they were not behind the bombing in which four Israelis died and 53 other people were wounded.
   But a videotape later surfaced in which a man known as a militant of the group and speaking in front of its colours, said he was about to carry out a suicide attack.
   Washington called for ‘immediate and credible’ action by the Palestinian leadership to find those responsible.
   The man in the video, Abdullah Shibaya Badran, from the Tulkarem region of the northern West Bank, said: ‘The attack was carried out in response to the killings and destruction of homes’ committed by Israel.
   Islamic Jihad officials in the territories were not immediately available for comment but an official based in the Lebanese capital confirmed that the group carried out the bombing.
   ‘The attack was carried out in response to violations by Israel of the truce announced by the Palestinian groups,’ he said.
   Several Palestinians have been killed since the Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, and the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, announced an end to hostilities during a breakthrough summit in Egypt earlier this month.
   At a meeting of security chiefs in Tel Aviv, Mofaz announced that Israel now considered that Islamic Jihad had broken the informal truce that it had been observing along with other militant groups and that military operations against its leaders would therefore resume.

Suspected Islamic insurgents have stepped up their killings since last week’s deadly car bomb in Thailand’s mainly Muslim south, but analysts said the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, should take a softer tone to ease tensions instead of launching a new crackdown.
   Fifteen people have been shot or stabbed to death in the south since insurgents detonated their first car bomb in the year-long conflict ten days ago.
   ‘The situation has become worse,’ said Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, a former lecturer at Prince of Songkhla University who lives in Pattani, one of the three provinces most plagued by the violence.
   Residents are terrified to go out at night, mainly because they don’t trust the police and military units that patrol the region to protect them against the indiscriminate killings of Muslims and Buddhists, security forces and civilians, he said.
   The latest victim early Sunday was a 49-year-old Muslim, Sueman Maming, who was killed as he was headed to the morning market in Narathiwat province’s Rangae district, police said.
   Fifteen minutes later gunmen in the same district shot a second man five times before fleeing, police said.
   Ahmad suggested the key to tempering such seemingly indiscriminate violence lay with Thaksin and his approach to the unrest, saying the prime minister’s tone was crucial.

Apologetic words from the Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, were encouraging but New Zealand has yet to receive a formal apology over a spy scandal, the prime minister, Helen Clark, said Sunday.
   Relations have been chilly since Israel’s refusal to apologise for what Clark described as ‘utterly unacceptable’ behaviour surrounding two alleged Israeli spies who tried to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports.
   The two alleged Mossad agents, Uriel Zoshe Kelman and Eli Cara, were deported last September after serving a third of their six-month prison sentences.
   Clark imposed diplomatic sanctions against Israel, pending an apology, including delaying approval for the appointment of a new Israeli ambassador.

As Myanmar’s military junta held secretive talks at home to frame a constitution as part of its so-called roadmap for democracy, dissidents backed by the United States met in Washington during the weekend pushing for the regime’s ouster.
   A stirring speech by a US state department official set the tone for the meeting at George Washington University, whose attendees included the prime minister of Myanmar’s government in exile set up after its landslide victory in 1990 elections, which were rejected by the military.
   ‘While the dictators in Yangon may project an image of control, those who have fought tyranny around the world and those who fight this struggle right from within Burma know just how ephemeral and weak their power really is,’ said Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for global affairs, using the old name of Myanmar.
   ‘It can never ever defeat the very universal desire of freedom,’ said Dobriansky, who was a human rights crusader in the state department when Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy scored a thumping victory in the country’s last free elections but was denied power.

Iraq said Sunday a half-brother of ousted Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, suspected of helping to organise the militancy and who figures on the US list of Iraq's most wanted, has been arrested.
   'Security forces in Iraq captured the criminal Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikrit, half-brother of Saddam Hussein and one of the leaders of the... past regime who killed and tortured sons of the Iraqi people,' a government statement said.
   Saddam's advisor and intelligence chief, a key post in the old regime, Hassan was number 36 on the US list of 55 most wanted former regime officials in Iraq. It was not clear whether he was arrested by Iraqi or US-led troops.
   'Sabawi's capture is the product of the government's determination to hunt down and arrest all criminals guilty of butchery whose hands are dirtied with the blood of the Iraqi people before bringing them to justice for the punishment they deserve,' said the statement from the prime minister's spokesman.

The CIA officers are increasingly concerned they might be prosecuted or punished for their conduct during interrogations and detention of terrorism suspects, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
   Citing current and former government officials, the newspaper said the spy agency’s inspector general was now reviewing at least half a dozen cases in connection with the treatment of prisoners.
   This is in addition to at least two other CIA cases being investigated by the justice department—one stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003 and the other from Iraq.
   ‘There’s a lot more out there than has generally been recognised, and people at the agency are worried,’ one government official told the Times.
   According to the newspaper, the CIA was especially worried that officers using interrogation techniques the government ruled as acceptable after the September 11, 2001, attacks might now be punishable.
   Concern within ranks had increased since December, 2003, when the agency removed its station chief in Baghdad, in part due to the deaths of two Iraqis who had been questioned by the CIA officers, officials said.
   The removal of the chief, who is not under any kind of criminal scrutiny, occurred nearly four months before the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison became public, reported the newspaper.
   Officials told the Times that some of the cases under review have never been publicly disclosed, but they would not give any more details including whether they were limited to incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq.
   Justice Department officials said only that several cases involving civilian employees of the government had been referred to the department, the paper said.
   In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, CIA director Porter Goss declined to say how many reviews of possible misconduct involving prisoners were under way.
   He said that while one case had been made public, ‘a bunch of other cases’ were now under review by the inspector general.

Iran and Russia on Sunday signed a landmark nuclear fuel accord that paves the way for the firing up of the Islamic republic’s first atomic power station, a project the United States alleges is a cover for weapons development.
   Iranian media said the Russia top atomic energy official; Alexander Rumyantsev and his Iranian counterpart Gholamreza Aghazadeh inked the deal during a tour of the Russian-built power plant at Bushehr in southern Iran.
   Under the fuel agreement—which would cap an 800-million-dollar contract to build and bring the plant on line—Russia will provide the fuel and fire up the reactor on the condition that Iran sends back spent fuel, which potentially could be reprocessed and upgraded to weapons use.
   The United States, convinced that Iran is using an atomic energy drive as a front for a secret bomb programme.
   The condition that spent fuel be returned was built into the deal as a concession to widespread international concerns over Iran’s ambitions. Iran initially rejected the condition, but eventually relented after two years of negotiations.
   The dispute over the fate of spent fuel had pushed the plant’s opening back to January 2006, and the deal faced a further snag Saturday when Iran objected to a Russian proposal to further delay firing up the plant’s reactor.

A dangerous humanitarian crisis is looming in the Democratic Republic of Congo with sharply increasing unrest in the region of Ituri where nine UN soldiers were killed on Friday, the UN warned.
   Observers say attempts to block the disarming of local rebels could jeopardise the transitional process designed to bring peace to the vast central African state after years of civil war claiming more than three million lives.
   Nine soldiers of the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo died and 11 were wounded Friday in the worst attack yet on the UN in Congo.
   ‘In Ituri, there is violence everywhere,’ said a UN official.
   Attacks on Ituri civilians have been ‘part of a devastating process of fragmentation’ of the traditional structures of rival local groups, said a political analyst.
   ‘It all looks like a last stand. They’re behaving as though themselves were at great risk,’ he said, stressing the dangers of the situation for the Congo political transition and democratisation process set to culminate in June with the country’s first free elections in 40 years after decades of tyranny and war.
   In two months more than 70,000 refugees have fled atrocities by armed gangs.
   The situation has deteriorated since a programme was launched last September to disarm 15,000 Ituri rebel militias.
   By this month only about 3,300 had turned in their weapons, according to the UN mission.
   Each militiaman must check in at a centre where he can either join regular government armed forces or return to civilian life.
   But a UN official said government armed forces had instructed militia to keep their men mustered at assembly points, ‘and we’ll come and get them straight away for the army.’

New evidence has emerged that the British prime minister, Tony Blair, may have committed himself to the invasion of Iraq nearly a year before the US-led assault began in March 2003, a newspaper reported Sunday.
   The prime minister’s office has consistently refused to disclose the date on which Blair promised the US president, George W Bush, that Britain would join the US in an invasion of Iraq.
   However, evidence obtained by the Independent on Sunday suggests that it was as early as April 2002, when Blair met Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
   A ruling by the Parliamentary Ombudsman says the government sought advice about the legality of a possible invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2002 as the result of ‘statements made in a particular press release,’ the newspaper said. The paper said it has seen the ruling.
   The press release is understood to have been in the name of the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who condemned Israel for failing to comply fully with United Nations resolutions calling for it to withdraw after an armed incursion into Palestinian areas, the newspaper said.
   As well as demanding that Israel ‘respect international law’, the press release quoted Britain’s then ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Jeremy Green stock, who said the ‘political and moral authority of the UN is not to be cast aside lightly’.
   The date of the release was April 9, 2002, the day after Blair completed his two-day summit with Bush in Texas.
   The implication is that immediately after the Downing Street official spokesman had denied that the meeting was a ‘council of war’, the government was investigating the legality of such a war.
   The issue is now being raised by the Liberal Democrats opposition party, who are concerned about the sudden urgency of ministers’ inquiries immediately after the summit with the president, Bush.

Grenade explodes at Quetta radio station
Suspected insurgents lobbed a hand grenade into the grounds of a state-run radio station in the restive southwest Pakistani city of Quetta, police said Sunday. ‘A grenade thrown onto the lawn of Radio Pakistan exploded late Saturday night and broke the windows of a room located at a corner, but no one was injured,’ Quetta police chief Pervez Rafi Bhatti said. Bhatti blamed insurgents linked to Marri tribesmen for the attack. ‘A few days ago we arrested two members of the Marri tribe and recovered 20 kilograms of explosives and 19 Kalashnikov rifles from them which they intended to use in terrorist activities,’ Bhatti said.

Indian PM assesses avalanche damage
the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Kashmir Sunday to study the devastation wrought by avalanches last week as three more bodies were dug up to take the death toll to 252. The bodies were recovered overnight in the worst-hit Waltingo area of the state. Singh, accompanied by the home minister, Shivraj Patil, made a survey by helicopter of the flattened hamlets, a state government official said. ‘He flew over all the affected villages along the mighty Pir Panjal ranges,’ he said, adding that Singh was moved by the scenes of devastation. Singh and his party flew over the village of Waltingo, home to around 740 people, and one of six villages 50 miles south of the summer capital Srinagar that were hit by avalanches.

World’s longest land tunnel in Japan
The world’s longest land tunnel was completed in Japan Sunday when the last bedrock was blasted away to open the 26.5-kilometre (16.4-mile) route, developers said. However, the railway tunnel in the Hakkoda mountains, 550 kilometres north of Tokyo, was only expected to keep the record for a few months since longer tunnels in Switzerland and Spain are near completion. It will take several more years before the Japanese tunnel’s interior is reinforced with concrete and rail tracks are laid. The Hakkoda tunnel, near Aomori city on the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, will be used for an extension of Japan’s Shinkansen (bullet train) service due to open in 2010.

Indonesian soldier killed in Aceh
Separatist rebels shot dead a soldier and injured another in a weekend ambush in the Indonesian province of Aceh despite continuing peace talks, the military said on Sunday. The ambush took place at Krueng Raya in Aceh Besar district on Saturday, said spokesman Edi Sulistiadi. The rebels fled afterwards, he added. Aceh is still reeling from a devastating earthquake and tsunamis on December 26 that killed more than 230,000 people. Spurred by the disaster, the government and the Free Aceh Movement have held two rounds of talks in Helsinki to try to end the 29-year conflict.
— AFP