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Posted on 10/10/2003 12:10:10 PM PDT by anotherview
Oct. 10, 2003
India signs $1b PHALCON arms deal
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW DELHI, India
India, Israel and Russia on Friday signed an agreement for the US$1 billion sale of PHALCON airborne early warning systems to India, a defense official told The Associated Press.
India's rival, Pakistan, has said the system would upset the balance of power in South Asia, where the two major powers have fought three wars since 1947 and now have nuclear weapons.
The advanced Israeli-made PHALCON radar systems are to be fitted on converted Russian-made Ilyushin transport plane that India will purchase from Moscow.
The deal, finalized during the visit to India last month by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was signed Friday morning, Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Amitabha Chakrabarti told the AP.
India's Defense Secretary Ajay Prasad signed the agreement with retired Maj. Gen. Yasi Ben Hanan, head of Sibat, the Israeli defense ministry's licensing agency for the PHALCON.
Mikhail Denisov, the first deputy chairman of Russia's State Committee for Military Technical Cooperation, also signed, Russian Ambassador Alexander M. Kadakin told the AP.
Technical discussion between the three sides were concluded recently and the agreement was cleared, an Indian official told the AP.
India and Israel had been negotiating on the PHALCON for several years.
India has been seeking to strengthen its defenses by acquiring the airborne warning and control systems that can detect aerial threats and serve as a platform to direct Indian combat jets to targets.
Pakistan, however, has criticized what it called India's weapons shopping spree, saying it is dangerous for the subcontinent, where the two major powers have fought three wars since their independence from British colonialism in 1947.
"We believe that such defense deals will upset the conventional military balance," Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the AP in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. He said the PHALCON deal is "worrying for us," but said Pakistan is capable of defending itself.
Ahmed said during a recent visit to the United States, Pakistan's Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali raised the issue of "Israel and Russia's defense deals with India."
Israel's deputy prime minister, Yosef Lapid, had told Indian journalists last month that the system "will ensure that the skies of your area are under your surveillance in a very effective way."
He said Israel had no animosity toward Pakistan, but "our good relations with India are to do with defense, and every country has the right to defend itself." Pakistan does not recognize Israel.
Defense sources in Israel say the trilateral deal was delayed for more than a year while Russia tried to negotiate better terms and India sought assurances that there would be no-last minute objections from Moscow after the deal was signed.
The sources said India was mindful of an American veto that torpedoed a similar sale to China in 2000. Israel and China had agreed on the sale of one PHALCON-equipped plane worth US$250 million, and China had the option of buying seven more.
At the time, the United States argued that such aircraft would increase the threat to Taiwan and endanger US pilots in case of war with China.
No mention was made of any objections by Washington to the PHALCON sale to India. The United States recently lifted its own sanctions on most military sales to India, which had been imposed in 1998 after India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons.
US and Indian troops have been engaging in joint military exercises from Alaska to the Arabian Sea over the past year, and their ties are growing closer since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Washington also has close relations with Pakistan, however, which India sees as its major threat.
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