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ASIA | Taiwanese officials have appealed to the United States to continue selling the island democracy arms, claiming such sales are in the best interests of the U.S. On Tuesday, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian made his appeal, adding that the U.S. "should continue to supply the Republic of China (Taiwan) with defensive weapons if the military development in the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is taken into consideration." During a meeting with former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, Chen said, "To ensure security in the region will benefit the ROC but also complies ...

The Fiscal Year 2000 National Defense Authorization Act directs the secretary of defense to submit a report "on the current and future military strategy of the People's Republic of China." According to an article published in Aviation Week and Space Technology, "China Seen Building Conventional Might" by Robert Wall, a senior defense official involved in writing the report is now charging the White House with deliberately altering the conclusions of the report. "The National Security Council staff and State Department have intervened with the details to soften the tone of the report to preserve good relations with China," charged ...

Chinese military leaders are growing increasingly impatient with the communist leadership and have begun stepping up calls to invade Taiwan, according to U.S. and Asian sources reporting this week. In one case, said a noted Chinese journalist last week, Chinese generals are presenting petitions written in blood offered by People's Liberation Army [PLA] soldiers and officers to the communist leadership in Beijing. The inscriptions, said South China Morning Post columnist Willy Wo Lap Lam, pledge that soldiers are "ready to 'sacrifice their lives for the cause of liberating Taiwan.'" Meanwhile, production of military hardware in China has picked up ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Army said Tuesday it is making final preparations for a test intended to prove that a new laser weapon can shoot down the kind of short-range rockets that threaten northern Israel. The test may be held as soon as Wednesday, said one Army official who spoke on condition of anonymity. An Army announcement of the test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., said it would be ``before the end of May.'' The importance of the laser weapon to Israeli security is underscored by the chaos that erupted this week along Israel's border with south ...

Beijing yesterday signalled its readiness to show patience and understanding towards President Chen Shui-bian, a far cry from the war of words it conducted during the Taiwan leader's election campaign. A senior mainland official, briefing foreign reporters on Taiwan policy, showed understanding of Mr Chen's domestic political constraints and drew a line between Mr Chen and Taiwanese politicians Beijing has written off as separatists, including Mr Chen's predecessor, Lee Teng-hui, and Mr Chen's Vice-President, Annette Lu Hsiu-lien. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, indicated that Beijing believed it could do business with Mr Chen and would be ...

The Chinese Communist leadership has launched an ambitious drive to install party cells in the nation's flourishing private businesses in order to reassert an iron grip on the economy. The move is a throwback to the command system built by Mao Tse-tung, in which control over companies was exercised through a network of Communist cadres whose authority outranked that of managers. Western businessmen are privately saying that the consequences of introducing party control over what has been the only promising area of the national economy in the past two decades are likely to be devastating. After Vietnam imposed a similar ...

WASHINGTON -- The United States has concluded that a limited national missile defense system would not prevent Russian nuclear annihilation. U.S. documents assert that Russia could destroy the United States with hundreds of nuclear warheads even if Moscow underwent a U.S. first strike. The documents were posted last week by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The Washington-based organization said the documents were presented to Russia in January by U.S. officials during negotiations to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that would allow deployment of the first phase of a U.S. national missile defense system. The United States plans to ...

TAIPEI, April 27 (AFP) - A US reconnaissance aircraft was intercepted Thursday by the Chinese air force off eastern China when it was spying on Chinese military movement, it was reported here.The US RC-135 aircraft, from Okinawa, was intercepted at 28,000 feet on the skies of East China Sea, Taiwan's ET Today Internet news quoted an unnamed general here as reporting."This was the first time in three years the People's Liberation Armyair force scrambled to intercept an unidentified aircraft out of its airspace," the general was quoted as saying."The move suggested the some PLA units, very likely ballistic missile ...

  UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the threat of nuclear war "remains a very real, and very terrifying possibility" at the beginning of the 21st century.   Without mentioning Washington by name, he also cautioned against plans to develop a "star wars"-type National Missile Defence (NMD), saying this could lead to a new arms race.   Annan was welcoming delegates on Monday at the start of a month-long conference to review implementation of the key Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).   Under the treaty, which entered into force in 1970, the five original nuclear powers ...

Chossudovsky: When an IMF mission goes into a country and requires the destruction of social and economic institutions as a condition for lending money - this is very similar to the physical destruction caused by NATO bombing. The IMF will order the closing down of hospitals, schools and factories. That's of course more cost effective than bombing those hospitals, schools and factories, as they did in Yugoslavia, but the ultimate result is very similar: the destruction of the country. The IMF has what is called the MAI - the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. It's the ultimate investment treaty. Signing ...

RUSSIAN military officials have helped to negotiate a multi-million-pound arms deal with Saddam Hussein that will enable the Iraqi leader to undertake a radical overhaul of his country's air defences. The controversial deal, which is a blatant breach of the United Nations arms embargo, has been negotiated between Baghdad and military experts in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. If implemented, it will enable the Iraqis to target British and American warplanes enforcing Iraq's no-fly zone. Under the terms of the deal, details of which have been made available to The Telegraph, Beltechexport, the state-owned Belarussian military hardware company, ...

Very methodically, the Chinese People's Liberation Army is putting in place the building blocks that will allow it to seize Taiwan by force. Defense Secretary William Cohen says the strategic balance in Asia is at risk. We agree. The PLA's strategy rests on four pillars, the first of which is the elimination of the United States as an intervening factor. Recently, the PLA Navy took delivery of its initial Russian Sovremenny-class destroyer. A second one will arrive in the fall, and there are ongoing negotiations for perhaps four more. These ships were designed to be aircraft carrier "killers" as the ...

In the Opium Wars, Great Britain was determined to subdue China by flooding them with dope, which also financed British worldwide interests. It was likewise a great ongoing profit to the British Monarchy. Now American Big Business wants to merge some of their doings with Red China. So IBM, Boeing, and other multi-national Big Feet want to tap into Red China's large pool of low-cost labor. To conceal what is going on, the American monopoly press seldom tell us what is necessary to know to understand all this. Here are some items, to be dealt with in this series, ...

ISRAEL became embroiled in a row yesterday with the US, its closest ally, after it refused to cancel a lucrative arms deal with China. As President Jiang Zemin began the first visit to the Jewish state by a Chinese leader, the Israeli Government defended the sale of a sophisticated early warning system to Beijing, which threatens America's military superiority in the Pacific. Ephraim Sneh, the Israeli deputy Defence Minister, said that Israel would honour its contract to China, despite what he called an American "steamroller" of pressure to halt the deal. "In this market of the defence industries of the ...

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban warned Russia not to attack alleged terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, reported Reuters April 12. According to the same report, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov said he would not rule out the possibility of air strikes. Given Russia’s antagonistic relationship with the Taliban and its historic support of its opposition Northern Alliance, air strikes are likely. Russia has repeatedly accused the Taliban of supporting Chechen rebels. The Taliban has offered the separatists military assistance and opened diplomatic ties. A Russian bombing campaign would send a clear message that Moscow will neither tolerate nor forgive insurgents ...

JERUSALEM, April 12 (Reuters) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin said on Wednesday China wanted to use peaceful means in  its policy on Taiwan but would reserve the choice to use force  if needed.   "Our policy has very long been a consistent one. Peaceful  reunification, one country, two systems," the Chinese leader  told a news conference during a visit to Israel.   "But we cannot undertake to give up the use of force  because we need to keep this option to prevent interference in  China's internal affairs."   Jiang arrived on Wednesday for the first visit to Israel by ...

Terence Jeffrey of Human Events reported the shocking inside story of Motorola's $1.5 billion investment in China's high tech computer and communications industry. Typical of the way China does business with Western investors, Motorola agreed to "localize both its staff and operations inside China. China requires that corporations who have any military-related technology set up manufacturing within China. This policy has been agreed to by Russia as well as the US. This allows China to clone the technology at will without having to evade US export restrictions. It will also allow China, during the next war, to seize all foreign ...

Intelligence report says China plans to buy more warplanes, ships, and subs from Russia Source: ChinaOnline News Tue Jan 4,2000 -- China is reportedly in negotiations to purchase more fighter aircraft, destroyers and submarines from Russia, according to the latest issue of Jane’s Defence Weekly. Citing "diplomatic sources in Beijing," JDW said China is seeking to buy 40 more Su-30MKK fighters, two or three upgraded Kilo-class submarines and two or three more Sovremenny-class destroyers. "Such assets would considerably enhance China’s area denial capabilities," JDW noted, "especially in the East China Sea where serious tensions exist with Taiwan."

Russia And China Developing 'Super-Fast Missile' Russia And China Developing 'Super-Fast Missile' >By Tim Butcher - Defense Correspondent LINK 1-2-2000     A long range missile fast enough to catch any combat fighter in the world is being developed jointly by Russia and China, according to British Aerospace.   BAe, one of the two rival companies bidding for a £700 million contract to equip the Eurofighter with its own advanced air-to-air missiles, said the missile could be in production as early as 2005. It has a "ram jet" propulsion system, giving a range of 50 miles and a speed ...