On NOW at RadioFR!
7pm/10pm - The "Banana Republican", our own Luis Gonzalez, has a spirited interview with...none other than JACK THOMPSON!
This is a CALL IN SHOW! Talk to BATMAN JACK THOMPSON!
1-866-RadioFR! (866-723-4637)
Posted on 05/14/2002 4:34:23 PM PDT by Pokey78
THE United States is expected to speed up moves to introduce high-tech monitoring equipment along the Kashmiri ceasefire line as part of an urgent effort to prevent a full-scale conflict between South Asia’s two nuclear powers. Yesterday’s killings by Islamist insurgents in Jammu came as the State Department’s leading official on South Asian affairs was in Delhi urging restraint on both sides. The deaths are likely to drag Washington not only into the mediation role that it was resisting only three months ago, but also into a sales drive for sophisticated radar and infra-red vision equipment for what it hopes will be better policing of the ceasefire line. In the first big American sale of military equipment to India, Delhi agreed last month to buy Fire Finder radar worth $146 million. It can pinpoint the location of enemy artillery and provide instant target co-ordinates for return fire. Yesterday, sources at the Sandia National Defence Laboratory in New Mexico said that, in addition to the radar, the sale of which has been condemned by Pakistan as not conducive to regional security, both sides have been shown an array of equipment that could be used for “co-operative monitoring between the two countries”. Moinuddin Haider, the Pakistani Interior Minister, was briefed in Washington by Sandia staff last week on equipment that has been cleared by the US for export, from infra-red cameras, such as those used on the US-Mexican border, to airborne radar capable of “seeing” through clouds, and ground sensors that can detect a single footfall on a remote mountain path. Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, was due to fly from Delhi to Islamabad today to promote what appears to be a hastily formed US regional security strategy based on traditional diplomacy but also increasingly valuable offers of aid and military assistance in return for co-operation in the War on Terror. South Asia is “a key front in the global war on terrorism”, Ms Rocca told Indian businessmen hours after the Jammu attack. “Dismantling the structure of extremism and terror must go hand-in-hand with addressing and eliminating its root causes.” In Pakistan today the US envoy will have to toe a subtler line. President Musharraf has taken grave political risks in aligning himself with Washington in its hunt for al-Qaeda leaders on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In return for his co-operation the US has already given or pledged aid and loans worth $1 billion to Pakistan. Washington is unlikely to threaten to cut its aid packages, which abruptly ended sanctions imposed when Pakistan tested a nuclear device in 1998 and are the main reason that General Musharraf’s alliance with America has been politically palatable at home. Instead, a steady increase in pressure on Mr Musharraf to do his utmost to curb extremist groups operating in Kashmir is expected from Ms Rocca and a growing number of lower-level US officials, who are giving a human face to America’s renewed engagement with Pakistan. “The more pressure we put on him, the more pressure he can put on his hardliners, arguing that this is necessary to keep the aid programme going,” Selig Harrison, an expert on the region at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, said. “It is probably within Musharaff’s power to curb violence in the region, but whether he could make any public commitment to end it completely — no Pakistani leader could do that.”
Can we get these for our southern border?
On NOW at RadioFR!
7pm/10pm - The "Banana Republican", our own Luis Gonzalez, has a spirited interview with...none other than JACK THOMPSON!
This is a CALL IN SHOW! Talk to BATMAN JACK THOMPSON!
1-866-RadioFR! (866-723-4637)
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