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ISLAMABAD: In his inimitable fashion, Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has dropped yet another bomb. Addressing a news conference at the Pakistan Presidential Palace on Wednesday evening, Musharraf said, "I am giving you breaking news that Pakistan will conduct an important nuclear test in the next two months." According to Xinhua , Musharraf refused to give further details. However, Pakistan daily The News reported that the 'extremely important substantive test' was most likely a longer range missile test. Musharraf also added that hectic arrangements were already under way. "Chairman of Nescom Dr Samar, KRL Chairman Javed Mirza as well as...

In 1985, according to the article below, Sen. John Kerry attempted to deny President Reagan a chief bargaining chip in his upcoming summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. ******************************************************************************* September 13, 1985 A federal judge, after listening to 30 minutes of oral argument yesterday, refused to block the Defense Department's first test of a new antisatellite weapon against a target in space, now scheduled for noon today. The test, like the problem-plagued, antisatellite system itself, has provoked controversy in the United States and threats from the Soviet Union. U.S. critics have argued that the proposed system will trigger a new...

Four years ago I predicted that Beijing would grind its teeth if Bush won. Well, it did more than that: it threw a "right tantrum" as my old English teacher used to say. (He was full of delightful and colourful sayings). Even as I wrote party hacks busily churned out anti-American and anti-NMD propaganda. The party line was the predictable one of arguing that the proposed missile defence system is hostile in intent and is meant to target Russia and China. (Democrats, Kerry among them, basically push the same line). But by the same logic, the Nazi's would have been...

Sometime between now and the end of September, President Bush will tell Americans that the United States finally has a rudimentary missile-defense system. The announcement will come shortly after the Pentagon activates a handful of interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. They'll be advertised as capable of stopping a limited ICBM attack from the likes of North Korea. Democrats then will repeat their standard arguments about why it's better to have no missile defenses at all. They'll say that it costs too much, won't work, threatens to ignite a new arms race, and...

Spinning the nuclear missile wheelBy Stephen Blank When the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, all sorts of charges and counter charges flew. Supporters of the treaty argued that if the system worked, an outcome of which they had no doubt, it would lead to a situation where defenses dominate against offenses. This would especially be true because Russia and America had just signed the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (SORT). This treaty formally terminated the state of hostility between the two states in nuclear affairs and let them build whatever mix of offenses or...

Why Japan went ballisticBy Tomohiko Taniguchi TOKYO - It has gone largely unnoticed that Japan now occupies a premier seat within a unique American defense club, a club of two - Washington and Tokyo. The reason for this is not because Japan is the second largest economy still committed to having its armed forces deployed in Iraq, but rather because Japan has decided to do what few other allies of the United States could. That is to follow the US in its controversial missile defense program. At present, practically no other nation is in a position to follow suit. It...

The man in charge of safeguarding the United States against a ballistic missile attack warned members of the House Armed Services Committee's Strategic Forces Subcommittee on March 25 that in the coming years the country will face a ballistic threat from a variety of sources. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish is director of the Missile Defense Agency, which has the task of building the nation's missile defense capability. He told the committee that intelligence estimates and Libya's recent admissions concerning its ballistic missile and weapons-of-mass-destruction programs show the United States is vulnerable. Kadish was on Capitol Hill to...

The short answer is that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is in favor of a national missile defense system (NMD). After all, it is politically incorrect to suggest otherwise. Most Americans are in favor of some kind of missile shield – even while understanding the prodigious costs and technical challenges involved. That said, the real Kerry-on-the-Record reveals him to be at best skeptical and less than enthusiastic about this ultimate weapon system. The all-but-frocked Democratic candidate for president strongly opposed the Bush administration's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty – a move construed by many as a clear condition for getting NMD...

AUSTRALIA’S OVER THE HORIZON RADAR TO BE ENHANCED Australia’s border protection agencies will be equipped with an enhanced ability to detect the illegal movement of people and goods with an upgrade of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), Defence Minister Robert Hill announced today. Senator Hill said the $62 million upgrade would improve the sensitivity of the operational radars and significantly improve their ability to conduct national surveillance of the northern and western approaches to Australia. It will also ensure that Australia remains a world leader in over-the-horizon radar technology. "After the enhancement program, the radars will have a greater...

WASHINGTON - In his office near the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish oversees a vast universe, encompassing thousands of scientists, defense contractors and sinister-sounding technologies such as hit-to-kill and High Altitude Area Defense. After years of top-secret research and billions of dollars in expenditures, the first phase of a national missile defense system is about to be deployed under Kadish's command, even as debate rages over the necessity, cost and effectiveness of the program. In the fall, 10 interceptor rockets based at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are scheduled to be activated. From there,...

Security fears for missile shield AN Australian decision to join the US in developing a long-range missile defence shield would destabilise regional security, Indonesia's chief foreign ministry spokesman warned today. Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill today said Indonesia was comfortable with Canberra's decision to proceed with planning for a missile shield, which in Australia's case could be based around advanced air defence warships equipped with long-range missiles. But Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said the system dubbed Son of Star Wars would cause security jitters. "It will not contribute to regional security, but instead destabilise the region," he said....

Dick Gephardt: Today, the question is one of how do we extricate ourselves from Iraq, and I believe the first step in that extrication is going to be to rebuild relations with our key allies. It's not just Iraq. It's the Kyoto treaty. It's the ABM agreement. It is agreement after agreement, which were critical to the maintenance of the victory of the Cold War and now to environmental sanity that this president has rejected. No wonder we have so much trouble getting support when we need it.

Boost-phase missile-defence will not work IT HAS been described as hitting a bullet with a bullet. These are America's plans for a missile-based defence programme to intercept and destroy incoming ballistic missiles before they can reach American soil. It sounds like a nice idea. The problem is that a group of eminent physicists and engineers—all long-time members of the defence establishment—have declared that a crucial part of it would be next to useless if it were built. The plan for missile defence is to create systems that can intercept an incoming ballistic missile during all three stages of its flight—the...

<p>President Bush specifically names North Korea as a key threat in an unpublished order on missile defense and says such a system is needed as a hedge against military surprises and intelligence failures.</p> <p>Mr. Bush also says in the presidential order, known as National Security Presidential Directive-23, that his administration will develop a strategic "triad" of long-range conventional and nuclear weapons, missile defenses, and an industrial and research infrastructure.</p>

Iraq recruited U.N. inspectors as informants and learns in advance which facilities will be searched, giving Saddam advance warning that enables him to play "rope-a-dope in the desert," according to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. As World Tribune.com first reported, Wolfowitz offered details of Iraq's "concealment" strategy in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations late last week. President Bush offered highlights in his State of the Union address last night. Middle East Newsline reported that much of the information on Iraq's infiltration of U.N. inspectors and concealment strategy U.S. officials cite comes from foreign intelligence services, including...

The Thinkable May 4, 2003 By BILL KELLER In each of the major cities of Pakistan, you can find a strange monument depicting a saw-toothed mountain and a poised missile. The mountain is a peak in the Chagai Hills, in whose granite depths Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests five years ago. In the Islamabad version of this tableau, which sits on a traffic island amid a congestion of garishly ornamented trucks, three-wheeled taxis and donkey carts, the mountain is bathed at night in a creepy orange light, as if radioactive. The camouflage-dappled missile is called the Ghauri, and it...

It seems to be official---N. Korea can reach our west coast with its missiles.Too bad Daschle can't sweep his 2001 anti-NMD press conference under the carpet. It was obvious from his delivery that Daschle's intent was to portray pro-NMD folks as idiots. At the end, he reveals himself to be the half-wit.Transcript from Daschle's press conference, in 2001, on the National Missile Defense ProgramWhether or not we want to violate the ABM treaty especially with a concept [NMD program] that we may not know ...or... that we do know now does not work is something that also mystifies me. I...

Insight on the News - Daily Insight Issue: 10/01/02 Brilliant Pebbles Beached Under Bush By Zoli Simon While the Bush administration is not focusing much on the space-based Brilliant Pebbles missile defense system, the Virginia-based missile defense group High Frontier thinks that Pebbles is the way to go. To read High Frontier's issue brief, click on the link below: www.highfrontier.org/2002_issue_briefs.html www.highfrontier.org2002 Strategic Policy Issue Briefs Issue Brief 76, September 13, 2002 When Oh When Will They Revive Brilliant Pebbles?     While there are some errors in the following September 10th Oakland Tribune articles written by Ian Hoffman, they contain...

A Year after 'September 11' Attack     Editor's Notes: On September 11 a year ago, the indicative building of the World Trade Center collapsed, and the myth of the Americans' psychological "absolute security of the native land" exploded. The ensuing American war against Afghanistan raised the curtain of a "globe-wide" attack on terrorism. The gradual international political situation after the Cold War began to undergo radical evolution. On the one hand, the new imperial empire concept of value has gained a new market in the superpower, the United States, Bush-ism experiences constant expansion in the anti-terrorist war. On the...

China's Nuclear Arsenal and Missile Defence M.V. Rappai, Research Fellow, IDSA Abstract Over the last few years, major focus of the nuclear debate has been turned towars the United States' proposal to erect a National Missile Defence (NMD) shield for itself. Of the existing nuclear weapon powers, China has been the most vociferous critic of this proposal. As and when this shield does become a reality, China will be the first to lose credibility as a deterrent against USA's existing nuclear arsenal. Therefore, taking countermeasures against such a proposal is quite natural. China's approach towards non-proliferation mechanisms is steeped in...