Arms race between India and Pakistan takes to air

ISLAMABAD: India’s plans to modernise its ageing air force have triggered a tit-for-tat Pakistani programme that could exacerbate strategic tensions in South Asia, officials and analysts told "The National".



Defence analysts said the planned air force expansions were part of an arms race between India and Pakistan that dates back to the 1960s and the height of the Cold War.

The South Asian neighbours, both of which possess nuclear arsenals, have fought three wars and as many regionalised conflicts since gaining independence from British colonial rule in August 1947.

Siemon Wezeman, senior fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfer programme, said: "Although India and Pakistan deny it, an arms race is on. India wants to become a regional power, and is building its arsenal accordingly, while Pakistan wants to maintain a rough parity for survival" in the event of another conflict.d

His comments came after an announcement by the Pakistani minister for defence, Ahmed Mukhtar, that Pakistan is to acquire 50 advanced JF-17 Thunder warplanes, to be co-produced with China at a factory about 50km west of Islamabad.

The new warplanes would carry an Italian "avionics package" that is far superior to the Chinese technology installed on the 30 aircraft currently being acquired by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), military officials close to the project said. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

Who Cares in the Middle East What Obama Says?

May 30, 2011 "The Independent" -- This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.



While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"

And it is true. Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab "spring", save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain's cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

A NEW STRATEGY FOR THE US: FROM THE CONTROL PARADIGM TO SUSTAINABLE SECURITY

The United States needs a new national security narrative, agreed a diverse panel of high-level discussants last week during a new Wilson
Center initiative, “The National Conversation at the Woodrow Wilson Center.”



Hosted by new Wilson Center President and CEO, Jane Harman, and moderated by The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, the inaugural event was based on a white paper by two active military officers writing under the pseudonym “Mr. Y” (echoing George Kennan’s “X” article). In “A National Strategic Narrative,” Captain Wayne Porter (USN) and Colonel Mark Mykleby (USMC) argue that the United States needs to move away from an outmoded 20th century model of containment, deterrence, and control towards a “strategy of sustainability.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter of Princeton University, who wrote the white paper’s preface, summarized it for the panel, which included Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President Ford and President H.W. Bush; Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.); Steve Clemons, founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation; and Robert Kagan, senior fellow for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

Framing a 21st Century Vision

We can no longer expect to control events, but we can influence them, Slaughter said. “In an interconnected world, the United States should be the strongest competitor and the greatest source of credible influence – the nation that is most able to influence what happens in the international sphere – while standing for security, prosperity, and justice at home and abroad.”

“My generation has had our whole foreign policy world defined as national security,” said Slaughter, “but ‘national security’ only entered the national lexicon in the late 1940s; it was a way of combining defense and foreign affairs, in the context of a post-World War II rising Soviet Union.”

As opposed to a strategy document, their intention, write Porter and Mykleby, was to create a narrative through which to frame U.S. national policy decisions and discussions well into this century.

“America emerged from the Twentieth Century as the most powerful nation on earth,” the “Mr. Y” authors write. “But we failed to recognize that dominance, like fossil fuel, is not a sustainable source of energy.” More >>>

Location: Islamabad

What Confuses Pakistani's

If one were to listen to television talk shows, one would conclude that Pakistan’s enemy number one is the United States, and that the Taliban or


other jihadi groups, whether Pakistani or Afghan, can get away, literally, with murder.

Whenever there is a bomb blast, suicide attack or otherwise, our religious parties immediately credit Blackwater, and even RAW and MOSSAD with the said blast. And even when the reveren jihadis claim the blast, the press goes into the ostrich (‘head in the sand’) mode.

Now take the recent survey conducted by Geo Television in nine cities and 42 villages across the country. According to the report, 77 per cent consider the United States as the enemy. For them, the release of the CIA agent Raymond Davis was more traumatic than the usual suicide bomb blasts and 70 per cent blame President Zardari (not the intelligence agencies) for his release. And, connected with this anti-Americanism, half of the people surveyed think nuclear weapons (which everybody calls ‘assets’) are in danger (presumably from America). And that is probably why only seven per cent people are ‘happy’— relieved? — over Osama bin Laden’s death though, paradoxically enough, half the population is ‘sad or worried’, while also not believing he was killed at all. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

NSG Membership: A Criteria-based Approach for Non-NPT States

In 2008, the 46 participating governments of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) agreed to exempt India from the comprehensive IAEA safeguards requirement of the NSG Guidelines.

This “India exemption” permits suppliers to conduct civil nuclear trade with


India, one of the three states that never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).1 The nuclear policy community widely believes this exemption undermines the credibility of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The desirability of providing access to the safest and most efficient nuclear power technology to produce electricity while protecting the environment, even to non-NPT states, is perfectly understandable, even though such supply is contrary to both the spirit of the NPT bargain (as it is presently understood) and the letter of the NSG Guidelines. In agreeing to export nuclear items and technologies to India, the NSG should have required India to accept formally at least the obligations of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the NPT. The NSG also should have entitled India to less cooperation from the supplier states than that made available to NPT non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS).2 Instead, the NSG exemption failed to commit India to a responsible nonproliferation policy. Moreover, the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Trade Agreement frees India to develop further its nuclear weapons program,3 grants India a generic consent to reprocess transferred nuclear material,4 and guarantees India fuel supply assurances that have never been offered to the NNWS, all of which agreed to disavow nuclear weapons programs in order to access civil nuclear technologies.

Now, the United States and India desire to take a further step by making India a formal member of the NSG and not just an adherent to its Guidelines. In considering Indian membership, NSG members should agree on criteria that would require India to conform to the contemporary understanding of the NPT bargain. The damage of the India exception is done, but some repair is possible in considering criteria applicable not only to India, but to all non-NPT States, thereby avoiding further discrimination among them. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

Understanding Pakistan's Nuclear Rationale

Three factors shed light on why Pakistan is rapidly increasing its nuclear weapons capabilities: India's fissile material stock; preference signaling; and the concept of moral hazard.






"Pak producing n-arms faster than anyone else", read one of the notes sent home by the US embassy in Islamabad as leaked by WikiLeaks. A recent study in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on fissile material and nuclear weapons' inventory points in the same direction. Pakistan has more nuclear weapons than India, and its weapons-usable fissile material inventories are larger than those of its bigger neighbor. In fact, Pakistan today possesses the fourth largest inventory of nuclear weapons in the world. The increasing nuclear capabilities of a country mired in internal conflict and considered to be a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism is alarming.
Three factors shed light on why Pakistan is increasing its nuclear weapons' capabilities: India's fissile material stock; preference signaling; and the concept of moral hazard.

Offsetting India's fissile material stock

Pakistan's main concern regarding India's nuclear capabilities is India's 1,300 kilograms of reactor-grade plutonium accumulated through many years' worth of nuclear waste generated by India's Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs). While PHWRs are the mainstay of India's (peaceful) nuclear energy program, the spent fuel that they produce is rich in plutonium-239 - a driving factor behind India's nuclear weapons program. After the 2005 Indo-US nuclear deal, India agreed to place a number of its nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. However, India also vehemently negotiated safeguard exemption for some of the PHWRs considered vital to its military program. As a result, eight PHWRs still remain outside IAEA safeguards. India's insistence on keeping some of the reactors unsafeguarded emanates from the ongoing debate about how many nuclear weapons should be sufficient for India's national security. In light of Pakistan and China's evolving nuclear weapons capacities, India would like to retain the possibility to vertically increase its numbers of nuclear weapons. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

Memo to Obama: Pakistan Is Not a Client State

Washington often acts as if Pakistan were its client state, with no other possible patron but the United States.


It assumes that Pakistani leaders, having made all the usual declarations about upholding the “sacred sovereignty” of their country, will end up yielding to periodic American demands, including those for a free hand in staging drone attacks in its tribal lands bordering Afghanistan. This is a flawed assessment of Washington’s long, tortuous relationship with Islamabad.

A recurring feature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy has been its failure to properly measure the strengths (as well as weaknesses) of its challengers, major or minor, as well as its friends, steadfast or fickle. To earlier examples of this phenomenon, one may now add Pakistan.

That country has an active partnership with another major power, potentially a viable substitute for the U.S. should relations with the Obama administration continue to deteriorate. The Islamabad-Washington relationship has swung from close alliance in the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad years of the 1980s to unmistaken alienation in the early 1990s, when Pakistan was on the U.S. watch list as a state supporting international terrorism. Relations between Islamabad and Beijing, on the other hand, have been consistently cordial for almost three decades. Pakistan’s Chinese alliance, noted fitfully by the U.S., is one of its most potent weapons in any future showdown with the Obama administration. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

China warns US against war with Pakistan

China has officially put the United States on notice that Washington’s planned attack on Pakistan will be interpreted as an act of aggression


against Beijing.

This blunt warning represents the first known strategic ultimatum received by the United States in half a century, going back to Soviet warnings during the Berlin crisis of 1958-1961, and indicates the grave danger of general war growing out of the US-Pakistan confrontation.

“Any Attack on Pakistan Would be Construed as an Attack on China”

Responding to reports that China has asked the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the Bin Laden operation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu used a May 19 press briefing to state Beijing’s categorical demand that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan must be respected.” According to Pakistani diplomatic sources cited by the Times of India, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.” This ultimatum was reportedly delivered at the May 9 China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, where the Chinese delegation was led by Vice Prime Minister Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo.1 Chinese warnings are implicitly backed up by that nation’s nuclear missiles, including an estimated 66 ICBMs, some capable of striking the United States, plus 118 intermediate-range missiles, 36 submarine-launched missiles, and numerous shorter-range systems. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

US Can hit nuke sites under new law

ISLAMABAD: As questions are being raised about safety of Pakistani nukes after the PNS Mehran attack, analysts have pointed to the new US


law which allows US to invade a country and confiscate “weapons of mass destruction.”

The legislation titled Lugar-Obama Act was passed in 2009 which is a continuation of Nunn-Lugar Act of 1991 which talked of providing security to the nukes of a country whereas Lugar-Obama Act expanded the legislation to sting operations to confiscate the nuclear weapons.

Defence Analyst Maria Sultan who is also the Director General South Asian Strategic Stability Institute while talking to The News said that Lugar-Obama Act was a continuation of Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme which was used to unarm Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus and in 2003 it was said that there was no need of any other cooperative Threat Reduction Programme but instead of finishing it, United States started another legislation in 2006 which was initiated by Barack Obama and Richard Lugar and in 2009 the 109th Congress session passed it.

Maria said that in attacks on PNS Mehran in Karachi and General Headquarters, strategic assets have been targeted and such attacks only benefit the larger agenda of international forces. She said that the US policy was linked with Ronald Reagan Defence Authorization Act which was followed by Nunn-Lugar Act and now the Lugar-Obama Act and through the latest legislation US can do anything against nukes. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

South Asian experts urge for climate change adaptation

KATHMANDU: South Asian environmentalists, hydrologists, climatologists and scientists at a regional training workshop on Saturday


said that climate change in conjunction with other drivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region would have a serious impact on water accessibility, people’s vulnerability to water-fuelled hazards and socio-economics.

They underlined a need to close the knowledge gap on the cryosphere and the availability of water resources in time and space. Basin-wide water availability scenarios should be developed and linked to water demand and socio-economic uplift, they stated.

The three-day regional ‘Climate Change Effects on Water and Agriculture from the Mountains to the Sea and Adaptation’, organised by in Dhulikhel and Kathmandu by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIDOM) in support with the Asia-Pacific Adaptation Network, Asia Pacific Mountain Network, concluded here on May 20. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

Promise and premise

Of all the regions in the world South Asia continues to be at odds with the trend toward greater regional economic cooperation.


Unresolved disputes and the zero-sum nature of Pakistan-India relations remain the main impediments to any significant move towards South Asia’s economic integration.
Almost 90 per cent of the region’s GDP is accounted for by India and Pakistan. It is therefore this relationship that counts both in terms of the expansion of intra regional trade and South Asia’s exports to the rest of the world. Several studies estimate that bilateral trade can easily surpass the current official level of $2 billion a year and that the potential – if informal channels are ‘formalised’ and the cost of trading through third parties lowered – is considerable. Some have put it at over $10 billion a year.

Without normalising ties and resolving outstanding disputes it is hard to see how this potential can be realised. Nor can the promise – and premise – of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) be met.
More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Noam Chomsky: Osama Bin Laden’s Death: There Is Much More To Say

On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in his virtually unprotected compound by a raiding mission of 79 Navy Seals, who entered Pakistan by helicopter.





After many lurid stories were provided by the government and withdrawn, official reports made it increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion itself.

There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 79 commandos facing no opposition - except, they report, from his wife, also unarmed, who they shot in self-defense when she “lunged” at them (according to the White House).

A plausible reconstruction of the events is provided by veteran Middle East correspondent Yochi Dreazen and colleagues in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/goal-was-never-to-capture-bin-laden/238330/). Dreazen, formerly the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is senior correspondent for the National Journal Group covering military affairs and national security. According to their investigation, White House planning appears not to have considered the option of capturing OBL alive: “The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.” More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Who in Pakistan knew Osama was there?

It was a telling statement. On Wednesday, the US defence secretary Robert M Gates said there was no evidence that anyone In Pakistan's senior leadership knew that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the garrison city of Abbottabad.

He quickly followed it up, however, with his own theory: "Somebody did know".

However, I have to question the whole allegation surrounding this incident. In all the reams of reporting on the extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden, and given the allegation that he was on kidney dialysis, there has been no mention of the necessary medical equipment in the Abbottabad house. Is this another red flag that signals caution? Editor

That is now the question that is doing the rounds - from Washington to Islamabad via almost every foreign office in the world. In Pakistan, senior military commanders are said to be embarrassed by the whole situation. Speaking on deep background, one army official said simply that the Pakistani military leadership was in crisis mode.

That theory was seemingly confirmed by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen who on Wednesday said the Pakistani army was in soul-searching mode.

In a very tense closed-door special joint sitting of Pakistan's parliament on Friday, the head of Pakistan's intelligence service Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha was grilled by a wide spectrum of the country’s lawmakers.

Various leaks from that session described it as being tense. Pakistan's top spy was in turn shocked at the allegations levelled at his agency, even at one point offering to tender his resignation. Quite simply, from some who attended that meeting, it was clear that Pasha didn't know Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

Repeated calls to Pakistani government officials have also yielded no results. Two weeks on and no one in Pakistani authority is willing to speak on the record.

If we take the US defence secretary's words at face value and cross reference that with the research I and others have done it seems plausible that Pakistani senior figures did not know. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Rep. Ron Paul on Pakistan

The helicopters that landed in Abbottabad won’t be the last to put American troops on the ground in Pakistan, says Rep. Ron Paul.





Calling the relationship between the United States and Pakistan an “impossible situation,” the Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he sees an occupation of even greater scale than Afghanistan on the horizon.

“I see the whole thing as a mess, and I think that we are going to be in Pakistan,” he said. “I think that’s the next occupation and I fear it. I think it’s ridiculous, and I think our foreign policy is such that we don’t need to be doing this.”

And Paul doesn’t have high hopes for that mission, if it happens.

“It will probably be very unsuccessful,” he said.

Paul, a noted non-interventionist, said the United States has created a civil war in Pakistan and violated the country’s national security.

He also addressed the idea of conspiracy theories popping up about bin Laden and the raid.

“How many stories have we heard already about the killing of bin Laden,” Paul asked. “I mean, people are supposed to know what their government’s doing. If you ask me exactly what happened, I have no idea because I’ve heard so many stories.”

Asked by “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski if he had just floated a conspiracy theory himself, Paul flatly said “no.”

“I think the inept policy invites people to think about conspiracy theories because we don’t get all the evidence,” Paul said. “I think there will be plenty of conspiracy theories because we’re presenting facts that we’re changing on almost a daily basis.” More >>>

Let No Man Say It Cannot Be Done

Greenpeace has invited Lester Brown to be a guest blogger, providing his unique analyses on climate change, food security, population pressures, and solutions.

He is president of Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge in which he promotes Plan B, a roadmap for saving civilization.





___________________________________________

We need an economy for the twenty-first century, one that is in sync with the earth and its natural support systems, not one that is destroying them. The fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy that evolved in western industrial societies is no longer a viable model—not for the countries that shaped it or for those that are emulating them.

In short, we need to build a new economy, one powered with carbon-free sources of energy—wind, solar, and geothermal—one that has a diversified transport system and that reuses and recycles everything. We can change course and move onto a path of sustainable progress, but it will take a massive mobilization—at wartime speed.

Whenever I begin to feel overwhelmed by the scale and urgency of the changes we need to make, I reread the economic history of U.S. involvement in World War II because it is such an inspiring study in rapid mobilization. Initially, the United States resisted involvement in the war and responded only after it was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. But respond it did. After an all-out commitment, the U.S. engagement helped turn the tide of war, leading the Allied Forces to victory within three-and-a-half years.

In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1942, one month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the country’s arms production goals. The United States, he said, was planning to produce 45,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, and several thousand ships. He added, “Let no man say it cannot be done.” More >>>>

Location:Islamabad

Quakes 'could rupture glacial lakes'

Glacial lakes in the Himalayas could pose a major hazard to population centres if they are ruptured by earthquakes, scientists say.



The true risk to settlements and infrastructure downstream in the Hindu-Kush-Himalayas region is difficult to assess.

But the Himalayan region is dotted with glacial lakes and is in a seismically active zone.

Experts say that, on the basis of past records, a large quake in the region is overdue.

Many glacial lakes are said to be growing - some of them alarmingly - because of melting glaciers.

Some are at risk of rupturing, which would flood areas downstream.

There have been at least 35 glacial lake outburst events in Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan and China during the last century, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep). More >>>

Location:Islamabad

US, Pakistan Need to Improve Ties, Says Senator Kerry

U.S. Senator John Kerry is calling for the United States and Pakistan to improve ties that were further strained following a U.S. military operation


that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Kerry, the most senior U.S. official to visit Pakistan since the May 2 raid, said Monday the two countries are "strategic partners" in the fight against terrorism.
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad on Monday, after holding talks with Pakistan's army chief the day before. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Blackwater Founder Forms Secret Army for Arab State

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering


seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand.

The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom.

Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by The New York Times. More >>>

Location:Islamabad, Pakistan

Rift between Pakistan and United States deepens.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Pakistan are veering toward a deepening clash, with Pakistan’s Parliament demanding a permanent halt to


all drone strikes just as the most senior American envoy since the killing of Osama bin Laden is to arrive with a stern message that the country has only months to show it is truly committed to rooting out the remnants of Al Qaeda and associated groups.

The United States has increased drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the past 10 days in an effort to exploit the uncertainty and disarray among militant ranks following Bin Laden’s death on May 2. The latest airstrikes, on Friday, came as Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in a rare appearance before Pakistan’s Parliament, denounced the American raid as a “sting operation.”

Parliament then passed a resolution declaring that the drone strikes were a violation of sovereignty equivalent to the secret attack on Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad. The lawmakers warned that Pakistan could cut supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks. The resolution contained no condemnation of the Afghan Taliban, who killed more than 80 Pakistani paramilitary cadets the same day. More >>>

Location:Islamabad, Pakistan

Global prize for water harvesting project in Sana’a

An American woman who has lived in Yemen for more than a decade, Sabrina Faber, has won the €75,000 first prize in the international Philips’ Livable Cities Award for her proposal to  address water shortages in Sana’a. Faber’s ‘RAINS’ is a rainwater aggregation proposal will now be put to the test.


 Faber has often faced water shortages. While trekking through the Yemeni countryside, she came across a method used by local people to conserve water. The cisterns used by mountaintop villages led her to consider how this practice could be applied to Sana’a.


 Many of Yemen’s cisterns are in a state of disrepair. Meanwhile, access to water is something many take for granted. But with rainfall being seasonal, water quickly becomes scarce causing major problems for burgeoning populations. The rise in unsustainable drilling of new wells in Sana’a also means that the little water that remains is rapidly depleting.  As a result, bo    ttled water is often the only option.


However, for much of the population, this is an expense they simply can’t afford. This in turn means infection, particularly among the young and elderly, is on the increase as many resort to the city’s heavily polluted water supply out of necessity. RAINS revisits the traditional Yemeni technique of harvesting rainwater from flat rooftops.


 Faber’s scheme proposes the modification of the existing structures in Sana’a to capture, filter and store rainwater. Each modified cistern would be capable of generating 10,000 to 50,000 liters of clean, dependable water for domestic use annually.  By working with local contractors and associations to identify pilot structures with decent viability, Faber hopes that this valuable method will be applied to any future construction in Sana’a, particularly residential building.  More >>>

South Asia's angle to food security

DHAKA, May 12, 2011 (The Daily Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- South Asian nations are faced with problems of


rising population and declining farm land in the region. Information sharing on the successes and challenges of agriculture and food security among the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries can help reduce risks associated with population boom and receding arable lands in the region.

Experts at a regional workshop in Dhaka have observed that the countries in the region have individually succeeded in developing better varieties of crops and vegetables and adopting effective disaster management techniques. Now they need to share the respective experiences on the basis of complementarities.

The information sharing assumes a critical dimension with the threat of climate related challenges that call for adaptation measures. The countries in South Asia share common rivers and are also littoral states to the Indian Ocean. So far as floods and cyclones are concerned they can develop and share early warning systems.

Flow of information on methods of cultivation and crop safety procedures as well as sharing market information on prices, products and inputs among the farmers, consumers and businesses can be components of a very useful Saarc strategy on agriculture and food security. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Taiwan mulls growing crops overseas to ensure food security

Taipei - Taiwan is considering growing crops overseas to ensure its food security, officials said Thursday.


You Sheng-feng, deputy director of the Agriculture and Food Agency, said Taiwan should boost its food security as the world is facing a growing food crisis and soaring food prices. 'While we grow enough rice for our consumption, we rely on imports for other grains. We import 5 million tons of corn, 2.5 million tons of soya bean and 1 million tons of wheat each year,' he said. More >>>

Inspectors Found Preparedness Issues at U.S. Nuclear Plants

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Federal inspectors found that some of the equipment installed after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to help American nuclear


plants deal with severe accidents was poorly maintained and inoperable, a top official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s staff told the five commissioners on Thursday.

Marty Virgilio, deputy executive director of the agency, told the commissioners that the problems had been fixed but more work was needed. Mr. Virgilio discussed the findings at a briefing on the vulnerability of American reactors to severe natural disasters like the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan on March 11.

The N.R.C. engineers said they had found no glaring lapses so far, but many potential problems. One is that many of the preparations the industry took after 9/11 for “severe accident mitigation” were taken voluntarily, and thus are not routinely evaluated by commission inspectors.

Mr. Virgilio’s boss, Bill Borchardt, the commission’s chief staff official, said that some of the preparations for severe accidents, including training, procedures and hardware, “don’t have the same kind of regulatory pedigree” as the equipment in the original plant design. More >>>

Britian criticizes UN Pakistan Flood Response

BBC: A British parliamentary committee has criticised the UN for poor leadership during last year's floods in Pakistan, which it said led to delays


and left millions in need of assistance. The International Development Committee said the UN used only two thirds of more than $1bn it raised for relief. Confusion and organisational constraints were cited as the reasons.

The flooding affected nearly 20 million people and led to the largest appeal for money ever launched by the UN. The International Development Committee said too many agencies and charities had been brought in, with some meetings attended by as many as 600 groups.

It also warned that climate change and population growth would mean increased need for disaster relief in the future. But it said it did not want to discourage future donations to disasters. The committee also praised the generosity of ordinary people after the floods. About 1,750 people died in last year's floods in Pakistan, and up to 20 million people were affected…
More >>>

Leak of C.I.A. Officer’s Name Is Sign of Rift With Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For the second time in five months, the Pakistani authorities have angered the Central Intelligence Agency by tipping the





Pakistani news media to the identity of the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, a deliberate effort to complicate the work of the American spy agency in the aftermath of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, American officials said.

The leak demonstrated the tilt toward a near adversarial relationship between the C.I.A. and the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, since the Bin Laden raid. It appeared to be intended to show the leverage the Pakistanis retain over American interests in the country, both sides said.

In an address before Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani made clear that Pakistani officials at the highest levels accepted little responsibility for the fact that Bin Laden was able to hide in their country for years.
More >>>

Location:Islamabad, Pakistan

Fear That U.S. Can Grab Nuclear Arsenal Heightens Pakistani Anger

WASHINGTON -- Last week’s U.S. raid into Pakistan is fueling one of the country’s most enduring -- and potentially dangerous -- conspiracy theories:


that the U.S. has designs on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and is prepared to send highly trained commandos into the country to seize control of the weapons.

The pervasive Pakistani belief that the U.S. would be willing and able to effectively steal the country’s nuclear weapons helps explain Islamabad’s surprisingly aggressive official response to the Navy SEAL assault that killed Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist (see related GSN story, today).
Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the head of Pakistan's armed forces, released a blistering public statement late last week condemning the U.S. assault and warning that he would order his troops to use armed force against any American troops who entered Pakistan in the future in pursuit of other wanted militants. More >>>

Pakistani Army Chief Warns U.S. on Another Raid

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The head of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said Thursday that he would not tolerate a repeat of the American


covert operation that killed Osama bin Laden, warning that any similar action would lead to a reconsideration of the relationship with the United States.

In his first public reaction to the American raid four days ago that left many Pakistanis questioning the capacities of the nation’s army, General Kayani did not appear in person, choosing instead to convey his angry message through a statement by his press office and in a closed meeting with selected Pakistani reporters.

The statement by the army’s press office said, “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States.”

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Negative Security Assurances: A Forgotten Promise – Analysis

The matter of Negative Security Assurances has been on the Conference on Disarmament’s Decalogue since 1978. However United Nations General Assembly first passed a resolution 21/531 in  1966 which calls upon Nuclear Weapon States to give Security Assurances to Non-Nuclear Weapon States that they will not use or threat to use nuclear weapon against non nuclear weapon states without nuclear weapons on their territories.

After the United Nations General Assembly Resolution there has been various proposal and recommendation proposed by the United States and Soviet Union for Negative Security Assurances and creation for nuclear weapons free zones in different parts of the world. In 1968 United Nation Security Council passed a resolution 255, whereby U.S and Soviet Union offered positive security assurances to non nuclear states, parties to non-proliferation treaty. More >>>