By Rachel Rossitto Thursday, September 9, 2010 Barton Brooks left his comfortable lifestyle to change the world. You're next. Have you ever woke up one morning, gone to your 9 to 5 job, sat at your desk and stared out the window, wishing you were doing more better the world? Barton Brooks did, and he also did something about it. It only took one eye-opening trip across seas for him to realize that he had another calling in life. Brooks, 38, was a real estate agent in Manhattan and decided to go to Cambodia. He always had a large appetite for traveling and adventure, but this very special trip made him realize the impact he could have on underdeveloped countries. While there, he fell in love with a group of orphans who were cared for by Buddhist monks. When he returned to the US, he gathered supplies for them and began creating projects "Guerrilla Aid" style through random acts of service around the world. He finally ended his real estate career and founded the nonprofit Global Colors, an international volunteer organization working to bring about change through volunteer projects. Their mission is: "You go somewhere, do something and teach others to do the same." The organization has grown to help people in countries across Asia, South America and Africa. They've also launched their World Wish Bead Campaign, which helps women in both Burma and Kenya sell handmade bead necklaces. By example, Barton hopes to spread the message that a simple gesture can make a big difference and that everyone can help in their own way. More Detail
Lawmakers and Activists Pressure Obama to Sign Landmine Ban Treaty
Thursday 09 September 2010 by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t Human rights groups are once again putting pressure on the Obama administration to join every other NATO ally and sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty, established during a summit in Canada, bans the antipersonnel landmines that continue to maim and kill thousands of civilians across the world. A landmine victim by the river in Kampot, Cambodia. (CC Photo: John Einar Sandvand, Cambodia Tales) The Obama administration is currently wrapping up a review of its landmine policies, prompting lawmakers, human rights groups and physicians to take action. Following its last policy review in November 2009, the Obama administration decided not to join the 158 other countries signed to the treaty. Human rights groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) quickly responded. "President Obama's decision to cling to antipersonnel mines keeps the US on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of humanity," HRW Arms Division Director Steve Goose said last year. "This decision lacks vision, compassion, and basic common sense, and contradicts the Obama administration's professed emphasis on multilateralism, disarmament, and humanitarian affairs." The HRW points out that US military has not used antipersonnel in 19 years and has not produced them since 1997, but President George W. Bush said in 2004 that the US would never sign the treaty. In May, 68 US Senators signed a letter to the Obama administration demanding that the US get with the times and sign the treaty. The letter was circulated by Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). The number of supports in the Senate exceeds the vote count needed to ratify a treaty. "The idea that a modern military like ours would be using indiscriminate, victim-activated weapons today is hard to reconcile with our current military objectives, particularly when you consider that the two countries [Iraq and Afghanistan] where our troops are fighting are parties to the treaty and the members of the coalition that we are leading in Afghanistan are also parties to the treaty," Leahy said. A group of 20 leading health organizations, including the American Medical Association and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), is circulating a petition to pressure the Obama administration to sign the treaty following its current policy review. PHR reports 30 to 40 percent of landmine victims are children, and millions of unexploded mines in 80 countries worldwide continue to threaten civilians and food supplies. "I have seen the impact of landmines on communities in Kosovo," said PHR Chair Dr. Bob Lawrence. "Long after the fighting stops, landmines continue to terrorize and maim innocent bystanders. This treaty is a vaccination against the scourge of landmines, and it's time for the US to join the international community in rejecting this indiscriminate weapon." More Detail
REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea : Electric wires are seen above cross junction
People ride in a tuk-tuk on a street as electric wires hang overhead in Phnom Penh September 9, 2010. A Chinese firm is drawing up plans to invest $3 billion in Cambodia, including projects in the electricity, real estate and metal processing sectors, a Cambodian government official said on Thursday. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea 
A man rides his motorbike on the street, as electric wires hang overhead in Phnom Penh September 9, 2010. A Chinese firm is drawing up plans to invest $3 billion in Cambodia, including projects in the electricity, real estate and metal processing sectors, a Cambodian government official said on Thursday. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea 
Electric wires are seen above a cross junction in Phnom Penh September 9, 2010. A Chinese firm is drawing up plans to invest $3 billion in Cambodia, including projects in the electricity, real estate and metal processing sectors, a Cambodian government official said on Thursday. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea More Detail
Kong Korm's letter to Chea Xim in regards to the gov't "political lawsuit" against opposition leader Sam Rainsy
Click on the letter in Khmer to zoom in 
Translated from Khmer by Soch Senate Committee No. 7
To: Samdach Chea Xim, President of the Senate The Chairman of the Senate Committee No. 7 and the standing President of the SRP would like to inform Samdach Senate President on the issue involving MP Sam Rainsy, President of the SRP, and villagers from Koh Kban Kandal village, Samrong commune, Chantrea district, Svay Rieng province – Mrs. Meas Srey and Mr. Prum Chea, the owners of the rice fields where temporary stakes for border post no. 185 were planted on and who were charged with “destruction of public properties and incitation to racial discrimination” through a lawsuit brought up Mr. Chea Yieng, the Chantrea district administration director. Regarding this case, based on the hand-drawn map and report provided by General Prach Reum, the Svay Rieng police commissioner, dated 26 October 2009, and the agreement confirmation provided by H.E. Cheang Am, the Svay Rieng province governor, dated 27 October 2009 and sent to the court, it was confirmed that these stakes for border post no. 185 were located inside Cambodian territories, on top of the rice fields belonging to Mrs. Meas Srey and Mr. Prum Chea, as per the complaints brought up by the villagers, the legal owners of the rice fields and MP Sam Rainsy. Because the rice field owners were concerned about losing their rice fields and the SRP MPs believe that this temporary border post led to the encroachment of the integrity of Cambodia’s territories, Mr. Sam Rainsy and SRP MPs published maps to properly explain this temporary border post based on its true geographical coordinates. The gathering of proofs, the explanations provided to the public, and the work performed by a group of technical experts were additionally accused by the government representative as “publication of false information and falsification of public documents through the Internet”. Regarding these new accusations, if we were to look at the map shown by the government border committee to the court on 12 March 2010, and the report provided by Prof. Regis Caloz, the physicist [and map expert] at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, they both showed that the complaints made by the villagers and the intervention by MP Sam Rainsy on the encroachment of rice fields and the border encroachment by Vietnam were valid. Based on the explanations above, I and a number of other sources, including the civil society, and in particular Prince Sisowath Thomico on behalf of King Norodom Sihanouk, believe that the case above is only a political issue. Based on the role of the Senate as the facilitator between the National Assembly and the government, and as Chairman of the Senate Committee No. 7, I am asking Samdach – who is deemed warmly respected by various groups and a statesman with common sense on important political and Cambodian affairs – to review and intervene with the government to drop its lawsuits and to intervene with the National Assembly to return the parliamentary immunity to MP Sam Rainsy, SRP President, so that he may serve the voters and participate in the strengthening of democracy, plurality and development of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Please accept, Samdach President of the Senate, my deepest respect. Phnom Penh 10 September 2010 (Signed) King Korm Chairman of Senate Committee No. 7 And Standing President of the SRP
Pchum Ben Celebration at Wat Thammikaram, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Click on the announcement in Khmer and French to zoom in Cliquez sur l'annonce en Khmer et en Français pour les agrandir 
What: Pchum Ben celebration Where: Wat Thammikaram 12181 Blvd. de la Rivière-des-Prairies Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 1R3 When: Saturday and Sunday 02-03 October 2010 More Detail Xen-Abishit meeting will not put an end to the dispute between the 2 countries
Rong Chhun, CITA and CWC President (Photo: Cambodge Soir Hebdo) Rong Chhun, President of the Cambodia Watchdog Council (CWC) and President of the Cambodia Independent Teachers’ Association (CITA), said that the meeting between the Cambodian and Thai leaders in New York on 24 September will show an improvement in the border tension, however, he does not believe that this bilateral meeting can put an end to the border dispute between the two countries unless an intervention by the UN will take place. Rong Chhun told VOA yesterday: “Because we follow up on all the bilateral meetings, if we count their number of times, we couldn’t even remember how many times there were, and the result is ‘zero’, there was no outcome whatsoever in regards to the Thai aggression.”
More Detail India: U.S. Completes Global Military Structure
Friday, 10 September 2010 Opinion: Rick Rozoff Scoop (New Zealand)
A September 8 report by a leading Canadian newspaper cited the Indian branch of the Deloitte consulting firm estimating the world's second most populous nation plans to spend as much as $80 billion for its defense sector in the next five years. It quoted an Indian journalist, Rahul Bedi, a contributor to Jane's Defence Weekly, as stating "No one else is buying like India.” [1] Earlier this year the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) disclosed that India had become the world's second-largest importer of weapons from 2005-2009, "importing 7% of the world’s arms exports." Only China imported more weaponry, though that nation is slated to purchase less foreign arms, both aggregate and percentile, in the coming years and the largest foreign supplier of its weapons is a non-Western country, Russia. During the five-year period mentioned above, Indian arms imports more than doubled from $1.04 billion in 2005 to $2.2 billion in 2009. Over the past 20 years Russia has been far and away the main provider of arms to India, as the Soviet Union had been in previous decades, though "The United States, currently India’s sixth-biggest arms supplier, seems likely to leapfrog to second position once New Delhi starts paying for a series of recent and ongoing acquisitions." [2] Those contracts include $1.1 billion for C-130J Super Hercules transport planes, $2.4 billion for Globemaster airlifters and $2 billion for P-8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft. (A version of Boeing's Poseidon reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare Multimission Maritime Aircraft modified for Indian use.) Reports in both the Russian and Chinese press speculate that when U.S. President Barack Obama visits India in November he "may secure $5 billion worth of arms sales," a deal that "would make the US replace Russia as India's biggest arms supplier" and "help India curb China's rise." [3] The unprecedented weapons transactions could include "Patriot air defence batteries and Boeing mid-air refueling tankers. "Observers point out that the role of India's biggest arms supplier is shifting from Russia to the United States." [4] A Chinese news source added that Washington will also supply New Delhi with howitzers and that "the total cost of the deal may exceed $10 billion...." The Economic Times of India disclosed in July that "talks are underway between Indian and US officials over a deal to sell 10 Boeing C-17 [Globemaster III] military transport aircraft to the Indian Air Force (IAF)." Wang Mingzhi, a military strategist at the People's Liberation Army Air Force Command College, warned "once India gets the C-17 transport aircraft, the mobility of its forces stationed along the border with China will be improved." [5] The C-17 carries a payload of 164,900 pounds for 2,400 miles and 100,300 pounds for 4,000 miles without refueling. In late August the U.S. signed a $170 million deal to supply India with 24 Harpoon Block II advanced air-to-surface anti-ship missiles. This February the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama administration, with a renewed focus on the Asia-Pacific region, intends to massively increase arms sales to both India and its nuclear rival Pakistan. U.S. military sales to Pakistan have risen to $3 billion a year and are expected to nearly double in 2011. As for its neighbor, "India is one of the largest buyers of foreign-made munitions, with a long shopping list which includes warships, fighter jets, tanks and other weapons. Its defense budget is $30 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, a 70% increase from five years ago." [6] In January U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited India and later in the month Washington secured a deal to sell India 145 U.S. howitzers for $647 million. "The Obama administration is trying to persuade New Delhi to buy American jet fighters instead [of Russian ones], a shift White House officials say would lead to closer military and political relations between India and the US. It would also be a bonanza for U.S. defense contractors, and [the White House] has dispatched senior officials such as Mr. Gates to New Delhi to deliver the message that Washington hopes India will choose American defense firms for major purchases in the years ahead." The Wall Street Journal quoted Tom Captain, vice chairman and Global and U.S. Aerospace & Defense director at Deloitte headquarters in New York, as claiming "For 2010 and 2011, India could well be the most important market in the world for defense contractors looking to make foreign military sales," where Russian equipment accounts for about 70 percent of that currently in use. Referring to India's plans to spend $10 billion for 126 multirole combat aircraft, Captain added: "That's the biggest deal in the world right now. If it goes to an American firm, that would be the final nail in the coffin in terms of India shifting its allegiance from Russia to the U.S." [7] Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen was in the Indian capital on July 22-23 and met with Defence Minister AK Antony, Air Chief Marshal Pradeep Vasant Naik and other military leaders. As a local news agency divulged, "Mullen's visit comes at a time when both sides are looking at expanding defence cooperation across a swathe of areas. "The visit also coincides with intensified lobbying for the $10 billion contract for 126 fighters for the Indian Air Force (IAF)." [8] The White House is negotiating new export control agreements with India to assist American arms firms to sell more high-technology weapons to the Asian nation. At the top of the list of U.S. objectives in expanding military ties with India are replacing Russia as the country's main arms supplier and the concomitant supplanting of Russian political influence, further tightening an Asian NATO around China [9] and weakening the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [10], all to ensure unimpeded American presence and domination in Eurasia. After the end of the Cold War and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, the Pentagon was given free rein to operate worldwide, including in parts of the planet hitherto inaccessible to U.S. troops and bases. U.S. European Command, through the expansion of NATO membership and graduated partnership programs, has secured the Defense Department a prevalent role in almost all of Europe and the South Caucasus. Central Command has extended its role from the Middle East to Central Asia and further into South Asia and the Indian Ocean. On October 1, 2002 U.S. Northern Command was established to oversee North America from Mexico's southern border to the Arctic Ocean. Six years later US. Africa Command was launched to subordinate 53 nations on and off the continent to American military and geopolitical strategy. In the past decade the Pentagon has deployed troops, military equipment and ordnance - in some instances missiles - to new locations in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region, the Middle East including the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, Central and South Asia, and South America. The final frontier is Asia from China to Iran, with those parts of it not covered by Central Command assigned to U.S. Pacific Command, the largest overseas military structure in the world. Its area of responsibility takes in India, China and 60 percent of the population of the Earth. In the 1990s so-called neoconservatives and realists alike from Paul Wolfowitz to Zbigniew Brzezinski triumphed in the emergence of the U.S. as the first, uncontested and only international superpower - what its current head of state Barack Obama called the world's sole military superpower in Oslo last December - and crafted plans to continue that unparalleled role into the indefinite future. What they agreed on was the need to guarantee that no other nation or group of nations rose to challenge American global supremacy, either on an international or a regional basis. By regional was understood any part of the world. The most likely rivals would arise in Eurasia, the American geopoliticians warned. The ultimate nightmare for the imperial strategists was some version of what former Russian prime and foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov promoted as a strategic triangle of Russia, China and India. An Indian commentary of approximately ten years ago described the U.S. counter-strategy as a policy of cultivating closer state-to-state relations with every nation in the world than any of those countries have with any other state, even their neighbors. Thus the U.S. is arming India and Pakistan, regional military rivals possessing nuclear weapons outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, as it is deepening defense ties with other nations on both sides of local conflicts and disputes: Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and the skies over the Aegean Sea, Croatia and Slovenia over the Adriatic coast, Serbia and Kosovo over the latter, recognized by almost two-thirds of United Nation member states as a province of the former, and so on. As the American corporate consultant quoted earlier pointed out, the best way of transforming the foreign policy orientation of other countries and subordinating them to Washington's global political agenda is by penetrating and gaining control over their armed forces. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Africa Command alone have provided the Pentagon mechanisms for initiating and consolidating bilateral military ties with over 100 of the world's 192 nations (in the UN). NATO and AFRICOM have given the Pentagon a continent apiece. That is in addition to other, frequently older, military client states in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. By supplying arms to those nations and eliminating traditional rivals for that role, Washington is laying the groundwork for integrating most every country in the world into its military network. Weapons sales are followed by instruction, maintenance, upgrade and field training agreements, with U.S. military personnel assigned to the purchasing nations. Regional and other multinational air, naval, interceptor missile, armored and ground combat exercises and war games are held to test weapons in live-fire and other maneuvers and to provide the U.S. opportunities for simulated warfare against potential rivals' equipment, tactics and warfighting doctrine. Pilots, soldiers, marines and sailors, including special forces, from military client nations are provided training in their own countries, in the U.S and in third countries to ensure weapons, deployment, command, communication and combat interoperability with the Pentagon for global missions. This July the Reuters news agency reported that U.S. arms sales abroad could surge from $37.8 billion to $50 billion next year, an increase of almost one-third. Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency - in charge of international financial and technical assistance, training and services and other military-to-military contacts - estimated a year ago "that weapons sales could reach a record $50 billion this year." [11] He added that U.S. arms sales have expanded from $8 billion ten years ago to $37.8 for the fiscal year ending this September 30 "and they are likely to continue growing in coming years...." "Among the biggest potential arms deals on the table now are huge fighter jet competitions in India and Brazil, various modernization programs for Saudi Arabia, and continuing support for arms sales to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon." Wieringa was also cited applauding "a drive by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other departments to reform cumbersome U.S. export laws," thus opening the floodgates for U.S. weapons sales throughout the world. [12] Four years ago the New York Times documented that "A total of $21 billion in arms sales agreements were signed from September 2005 to September 2006, compared with $10.6 billion in the previous year," according to Pentagon data. [13] Nations that had never purchased American weaponry before and that only had negligible armed forces now offer lucrative prospects for American arms manufacturers. India is preeminent in the first category. The weapons manufacturers' wares are produced for - deadly - use and not for simple display, deterrence and (dubious) prestige. Weapons sales are promoted through international arms shows and exhibitions, but more so through actual demonstrations. War games suit that purpose, but war itself does it to a greater degree. The U.S. offered the world large-scale military hardware expositions in the three wars it launched in less than four years: Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The recent announcement that the U.S. will supply Saudi Arabia with a staggering $80 billion worth of arms in the next few years is paralleled by its plans to become India's main arms provider. Weapons transactions are inextricably connected with overall military integration, and since 2002 - immediately following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the Pentagon and its NATO allies moving into new military bases in that country, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - Washington began regular (annual) air, sea and land maneuvers with India of ever-increasing scope and intensity. Last October 12-29 the U.S. Army participated in the latest and largest of Yudh Abhyas ("training for war") war games held since 2004 with its Indian counterpart. Exercise Yudh Abhyas 2009 featured 1,000 troops, the U.S.'s Javelin anti-tank missile system and the first deployment of American Stryker armored combat vehicles outside the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of war. The Strykers were tested against Indian T-90 tanks, "currently the most modern tank[s] in service with the Russian Ground Forces and Naval Infantry." [14] The U.S. ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, said of the military maneuvers: "The broadened and unprecedented scope of Yudh Abhyas stands as a testament to the growing people-to-people and military-to-military ties of the United States and India, one of the key pillars of the expanded U.S.-India strategic partnership." [15] The Pentagon showcased both the Strykers and the Javelin third generation anti-tank guided missiles during the biggest-ever joint U.S.-Indian ground combat exercises and not without the desired effect. An American press agency disclosed on September 3 that "Russia has traditionally been India's largest arms supplier but following evidence of the capabilities of U.S. military equipment during joint exercises with the Indian army, navy and air force, the Indian army decided to purchase several hundred Javelin anti-tank guided missiles, demonstrated during the war games....The Javelins were deployed for Indian forces for the first time in the Yudh Abhyas 09 joint military exercise in Babina, the largest war game that the two armies have had." [16] Last month the Times of India reported that "India will order a 'large' number of the quite-expensive Javelin ATGM systems from the US. "The deal for the man-portable, fire-and-forget Javelin ATGM systems will once again be a direct government-to-government one under the American foreign military sales (FMS) programme, without any global multi-vendor competition. "While the exact number of Javelin systems India will induct is yet to be decided, it could well run into thousands. The Army, after all, has a shortfall of around 44,000 ATGMs of different types...." [17] In July the Raytheon Company announced that India is evaluating the Patriot ground-based anti-ballistic missile system for purchase and deployment and that the U.S. had provided New Delhi with "classified" material on it recently. Sales of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missiles to India are reported to be on Barack Obama's agenda during his November visit. By acquiring them, India would join fellow Asia-Pacific nations Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as well as NATO members Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Greece and U.S. Middle East military clients Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Joseph Garrett, Raytheon vice president and deputy for Patriot programs, disclosed that "A number of exchanges have taken place between the government of India and the US and information has been given to India at the classified level." Patriots were "successfully used during both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Patriot's manufacturer Raytheon has said." [18] Seven consecutive years of Yudh Abhyas war games aren't the only joint U.S.-Indian military exercises held each year of late. In fact they are full spectrum in their range. Starting shortly after the end of the Cold War, Washington initiated joint Malabar naval exercises with India. Suspended after the latter's nuclear tests in 1998, they resumed in 2002 and have grown in scale over the years. Malabar 2002 included standard maritime maneuvers but also anti-submarine warfare exercises. The 2003 drills featured an American guided missile destroyer, a guided missile cruiser and a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine and two Indian guided missile frigates, a submarine and several aircraft which concentrated on anti-submarine warfare tactics. 2004 saw a continuation of anti-submarine drills and included a U.S. nuclear-powered fast attack submarine and anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft. The next year's war games featured a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft supercarrier for the first time and included a 24-hour simulated "war at sea" with the two nations' navies engaging in mock combat. In 2006 an American expeditionary strike group (the USS Boxer Expeditionary Strike Group) consisting of over 6,500 U.S. Navy personnel, amphibious ships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines participated in the exercise for the first time. Also, with the inclusion of the Canadian navy the 2006 Malabar exercises expanded for the first time beyond the bilateral format of the preceding two years. The next year was a watershed one in many respects. Malabar 2007 included 25 warships from five nations: In addition to the U.S. and India, participating countries were Australia, Japan and Singapore, at the time leading to suspicions of American plans to forge an Asian NATO. The drills were held for the first time in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast, which further raised Chinese concerns, and extended into the Andaman Sea near the strategic Strait of Malacca. The U.S. supplied 13 warships including the USS Nimitz nuclear supercarrier, the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, the USS Chicago nuclear submarine, two guided missile cruisers and six guided missile destroyers. Japan provided two destroyers, Singapore a frigate and Australia a frigate and a tanker. Malabar 2008 returned to a bilateral context with the involvement of the USS Ronald Reagan Strike Group, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine and a P-3 Orion anti-submarine plane. 4,000 personnel from three nations - the U.S., India and Japan - participated in last year's exercise which included anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, air defense and live-fire gunnery training drills. Malabar 2010 was conducted in April with ships, submarines, aircraft and personnel from the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, among which were a nuclear fast attack submarine, two guided missile destroyers, a guided missile cruiser, a guided missile frigate, Sea Hawk helicopters, anti-submarine aircraft and Navy SEALS. The Pentagon hasn't been content to exercise its troops and weapons on India's soil and off its coasts. Starting in 2004 the U.S. has also led annual air combat maneuvers called Cope India. The first series of bilateral aerial warfare exercises tested U.S. state-of-the-art F-15 Eagle fighters against Russian-made MiG-21, MiG-27, MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-30 opposite numbers along with French-made Mirage 200 fighters. The U.S. warplanes were consistently bested by their MiG-21 and Su-30 rivals. The Cope India maneuvers, like comparable ones in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe and the Red Flag air combat exercises in the U.S., provide the Pentagon an opportunity to engage and compete against advanced Russian military aircraft for use in real war scenarios in the future. Cope India 2005 pitted American F-16 Fighting Falcons against India's most advanced, largely Russian-produced, fighters in - for the first time in joint U.S.-Indian air exercises - a combat environment controlled by airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft. The next year over 250 U.S. airmen stationed throughout the Pacific region accompanied F-16 Fighting Falcons to India for Cope India 2006. The F-16s were deployed against the most advanced fighter in the Indian Air Force's arsenal, the Su-30 MKI (adapted from the Russian Su-30) as well as MiG-21, MiG-27, MiG-29 and Mirage 2000 fighters. In 2008 an Indian Air Force contingent of eight Su-30 MKI fighters, two Russian-made in-flight refuellers, a Russian heavy lift transport aircraft and almost 250 airmen "winged their way halfway across the globe to the deserts of Nevada," to participate in an Exercise Red Flag, held three or four times a year in Nevada and Alaska and "acknowledged to be the most advanced and professionally challenging fighter exercise conducted anywhere in the world." [19] The exercise marked several precedents: It included the largest single deployment of the Indian Air Force outside India. It was the first time that the air forces of nations not in NATO or those of major non-NATO allies - India and South Korea - participated in Red Flag air combat maneuvers. "It was also the first time that the SU30 MKI, a frontline combat aircraft of Russian design, made its appearance in the American skies and that too in a multi-national congregation." [20] India was elevated to the status of an American strategic military ally, on the level of a NATO partner, on June 28, 2005 when U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee signed the New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship, in effect a ten-year defense pact. India has become the convergence point for the U.S.-led NATO bloc moving from the west into Central and South Asia and the expansion of an Asia-Pacific NATO growing from its Japan-Australia-South Korea-Taiwan nucleus to absorb the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Mongolia, New Zealand and the five former Soviet Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are to varying degrees being integrated into the structure as well. India is also intended as a central locus for the U.S. global interceptor missile grid based on land and sea and in the air and space, linking deployments in Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the South Caucasus and the Middle East to those in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Alaska, including the latter's Aleutian Islands. Moving the Asian nation into the Pentagon's column will not only affect the balance of forces in Asia but throughout the world. ---------- References: 1) Toronto Star, September 8, 2010 2) Business Standard, March 18, 2010 3) Global Times, July 13, 2010 http://world.globaltimes.cn/asia-pacific/2010-07/550830.html 4) Voice of Russia, July 11, 2010 http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/07/11/12033554.html 5) Global Times, July 13, 2010 6) Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2010 7) Ibid 8) Indo-Asian News Service, July 20, 2010 9) U.S. Expands Asian NATO To Contain And Confront China
More Detail President: Enough space for both India, China to develop, grow
Fri Sep 10 2010 Dhiraj Nayyar IndianExpress.com On board Air India One:
President Pratibha Patil embarked on a nine-day visit to Laos and Cambodia on Thursday, the second such visit by an Indian President after Dr Rajendra Prasad. The President pointed out that India has deep historical and cultural relations with these countries dating back to Emperor Ashoka’s period. “Wat Phu in Laos and Ankor Wat in Cambodia, both World Heritage Sites, stand as grand symbols of the ancient civilisational linkages of India with these countries,” she said. When queried by the media on China’s growing political and economic influence in the region once known as Indo-China, President Patil eschewed any notion of a zero sum competition for influence between India and China. “There is enough space in the world for both India and China to develop and grow. They can achieve their aspirations simultaneously,” she said. She did, however, admit that while trade and investment linkages between India and Laos and Cambodia had grown over the years, they remained much below potential. She expressed hope that her visit would help accelerate economic engagement between India and the two countries.
More Detail [Indian Prez] Pratibha to seek Asean cooperation in fighting terror
Vientiane (LAOS), September 10, 2010 Parvathi Menon The Hindu (India)
President Pratibha Devisingh Patil's 10-day state visit to the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) and Cambodia will see India seeking cooperation in new areas, including collaboration in combating extremism and terrorism, a concern that India is now taking to its eastern allies. “I look forward to an exchange of views with Laos and Cambodia on how we can promote greater stability and security in the region,” Ms. Patil told the Indian media. The three countries have “much to gain by cooperating with each other in combating extremism and terrorism,” she pointed out. “As part of our ‘Look East Policy' from the early 1990s, India has emerged as one of the largest trading partners of Asean [Association of Southeast Asian Nations]. As country coordinator for India from 2003-06 in Asean, Laos played a proactive and supportive role in enhancing India's profile in the region,” said Ms. Patil. She noted that under Cambodia's Asean chairmanship India attained summit-level partnership. Asked how India viewed China's growing presence in the region, she said India's relationship with Beijing was enduring and strong. “We believe that there is enough scope in the world for both the countries to develop and grow and both can fulfil and achieve their aspirations simultaneously.” The President, who is visiting the two countries on the invitation of Laos President Choummaly Sayasone and King of Cambodia Norodom Sihamoni, is accompanied by a business delegation from India. The second Indian president to visit the Lao PDR, Ms. Patil was met at the International Wattay Airport in Vientiane on Thursday by Khempheng Pholsena, Minister in the office of the Prime Minister. During her four-day stay in Lao PDR, Ms. Patil will visit historical sites in Luang Prabang. It is expected that several agreements will be signed between the two countries, including in the field of culture. In Cambodia, the President will visit Siem Reap to see the Angkor Wat complex.
More Detail [India's] FRI team to embark on mission to save trees at Cambodia’s ancient Ta Prohm temple
Fri Sep 10 2010 Gautam Dheer IndianExpress.com
A team from the Forest Research Institute (FRI), the country’s premier forest research organisation, will soon travel to Cambodia, to save one of the major attractions of that country. Its task will be to save the Speung trees, many of which stand over 60 metres tall and are over 100 years old, at the ancient Ta Prohm temple in Siem Reap province. The trees, which add to the charm of the 800-year-old temple, are currently facing a serious threat and it is up to the FRI team now to save them. There are 33 such trees which have been classified in high risk category after field surveys and need urgent treatment and restoration. The team of experts from the FRI will be visiting Cambodia in November to deliver the prescription for treating these trees. Director FRI Dr S S Negi told The Indian Express that an expert team of the FRI had carried out an assessment of the trees in the temple complex and concluded that the trees, some with 13-metre girth at the base, are unhealthy and need urgent intervention. “It’s a prestigious project for us,” he said. “These massive trees bear the risk of extreme hollowness (heart rot), which could even uproot it, and suffer from exposed roots, fungal infections and surface decay,” Negi said More Detail
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