| Maina |
Posted
on 10-Apr-02 12:47 PM
Wednesday, 10 April, 2002, 16:12 GMT 17:12 UK
Nepal minister expelled from ruling party
The Nepalese communications minister, Jayprakash Gupta, has been expelled from the ruling party.
The Nepalese Congress Party said it was expelling him for one year because he had expressed support for comments by the head of the army Prajawal Shamsher Rana, that the government was not doing enough to boost the morale of the security forces in their campaign against Maoist rebels.
Mr Gupta told the BBC the decision to expel him was an act of personal revenge and an attempt to damage the faction of the party which supports the prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba.
The NCP is split into two unofficial factions, with the other loyal to the former prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala.
A BBC correspondent in Nepal says it is not clear how the expulsion will affect Mr Gupta's position in the cabinet, but the move is likely to embarrass the prime minister's eight-month old government.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
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| MAINA |
Posted
on 10-Apr-02 01:08 PM
• Section Front
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Satellites: Everyone's Got 'Em
WASHINGTON, April 9, 2002
(AP)
"We're losing our monopoly."
James Lewis,
Center for Strategic and International Studies
(AP) Pictures from sharp-eyed satellites, once the domain of the United States and Russia, are becoming so easy to obtain that the military may have to alter its strategies knowing adversaries with a minimum of know-how and money can be watching.
Perhaps a half-dozen countries as well as some private companies have spy satellites that, while not as good as those used by the United States, are able to supply solid military intelligence.
"The unique space-borne advantage that the U.S. has enjoyed over the past few decades is eroding as more countries — including China and India — field increasingly sophisticated reconnaissance satellites," CIA Director George J. Tenet said in a recent Senate hearing.
Tenet said adversaries are quickly learning how to take advantage.
"Foreign military, intelligence and terrorist organizations are exploiting this — along with commercially available navigation and communications services — to enhance the planning and conduct of their operations," he said.
In the past, only Moscow had satellite capability approaching that of the United States.
Now, with its own spy satellites, China would be able to learn of the location and composition of a U.S. carrier battlegroup dispatched during a potential dispute over Taiwan.
Eleven years ago, the United States threatened an amphibious assault on Iraq from the Persian Gulf before hitting Iraq's army with a "left hook" from the western flank. If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had had access to the kind of commercially available satellite imagery now for sale, it's conceivable he could have moved his troops to meet the coalition's surprise land assault.
The latest advances in foreign countries are largely the result of their research rather than technology purchases or espionage, experts said. The United States pioneered much of the technology; now, other countries are replicating it.
"We're losing our monopoly," said James Lewis, a former Commerce and State Department space policy expert now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "After the war in the Persian Gulf, other countries figured out it was really good to have space capabilities."
U.S. military satellites remain the best — they can discern far more detail and collect more images. Their numbers allow them to take pictures more frequently of a given area. A new generation of spy satellites, part of a project called "Future Imagery Architecture," is planned.
But now that other countries have access to high-resolution imagery, they can count tanks, track fleets and acquire other information useful in predicting U.S. military moves.
That means the military will have to practice the same "denial and deception" techniques adversaries have used to avoid detection by U.S. reconnaissance, experts say. Tanks are camouflaged under trees. Secret projects are hidden in buildings when a reconnaissance satellite is overhead.
During the first months of the Afghan war, the United States simply bought exclusive access to the right parts of the orbit of the Ikonos satellite, then the best commercial satellite in the skies. This prevented anyone else from having a look at Afghanistan, and the U.S. company that runs Ikonos, Space Imaging Inc., was happy to sell.
It's unclear if the U.S. government will do that in future wars. While it can exercise "shutter control" over U.S.-owned satellites, foreign-owned satellites are under no such restriction. Foreign companies also may not want to sell imagery solely to the Americans.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who has studied these issues, suggested the military develop ways to jam satellite transmissions and prevent ground stations from receiving the pictures.
"The more information an adversary has, the more vulnerable we are," he said. "We have to think about jamming and other capabilities at the appropriate times."
Both the United States and the former Soviet Union worked on weapons that would bring down spy satellites in the event of a major war. But interest in those technologies has waned.
James also said he worries that the United States is losing its edge in building the best satellites. New restrictions on exports of satellite components, while slowing the transfer of sophisticated technology, have also caused U.S. manufacturers to close, he said. These rules were enacted after an investigation into the Clinton administration's decision to let two U.S. aerospace companies export satellites to be launched atop Chinese rockets.
By John J. Lumpkin
©MMII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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| MAINA |
Posted
on 10-Apr-02 01:56 PM
India says rebels get refuge in Bhutan, Bangladesh
GUWAHATI, India, April 10 — Indian forces have failed to crush a decades-old revolt in the northeastern state of Assam because rebels find refuge in neighbouring Bhutan and Bangladesh, the state's top police official said on Wednesday.
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Separatist rebels have been fighting authorities in Assam, an ethnically diverse state of 26 million people, for more than two decades. Some 10,000 people have been killed in the insurgency.
The rebels, who accuse New Delhi of plundering Assam's tea and oil and giving nothing back, set up bases across the border in Bhutan after Indian forces launched a campaign against them 11 years ago. The rebels also seek refuge in Bangladesh.
''It has complicated our job. We have often given militants a mauling. But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, they start operations again,'' H.K. Deka, Assam's director general of police, told Reuters in an interview in Guwahati, the state's main city.
''This is because they go back to their habitat outside the country, continue training and still have their weapon routes in tact,'' Deka said.
Bangladesh denies that groups fighting Indian rule operate from its territory, but Bhutan has acknowledged guerrilla camps on its side of the border. Assam shares a 285 km (180-mile) frontier with Bhutan and an 800 km (500-mile) border with Bangladesh.
The state's main insurgent group, the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), had agreed with Bhutan to close down its camps there by the end of last year but Indian officials say the guerrillas have not done so.
''Because of these factors, insurgency has not died out in this area. They are not operating from inside Assam. But we will continue to do our job fighting them,'' Deka said.
The ULFA, which has been fighting for independence since 1979.
The other main rebel group in Assam is the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) which has been fighting for a separate country for ethnic Bodo people who make up about 13 percent of the state's population.
Deka said the two rebel groups had in all up to 900 armed fighters and about 3,500 active supporters who do not take part in attacks.
Security forces in Assam killed 248 insurgents from the two main groups last year while losing 55 of their men. Guerrillas killed about 200 civilians last year, authorities said.
Both the NDFB and ULFA often target settlers from other parts of India and have killed dozens of Bengali migrants this year including women and children, authorities say.
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
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