Crisis India-Pakistan:
Achtergrondinformatie, analyse en nieuws
uit de Indiase, Pakistaanse en internationale media.

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December 31, 1999

Text of resolution adopted at the Press Club, Karachi, on 31 December, 1999

Pakistan Peace Coalition

At the millennium's end, it is completely clear that five decades of confrontation between Pakistan and India have led to nothing but misery, deprivation, and war. Apart from draining resources away from the needs of our peoples, the nuclear tests of May 1998 have put the subcontinent under the shadow of nuclear catastrophe. Kargil was a disaster for Pakistan and has worsened our relations with India, as well as further decreasing Pakistan's credibility and support internationally. India has lost much, but Pakistan has lost still more. There is no solution to the Kashmir problem in sight, and economic collapse has been a constant possibility since the nuclear tests. In view of the seriousness of the situation, the Pakistan Peace Coalition calls upon the people and leadership of Pakistan to:

We call upon all people of goodwill in the country to join and strengthen the Pakistan Peace Coalition. We have reason to believe that a large number of Indian citizens are also working for the same goal on the other side of the border. For Pakistan and India, prosperity and progress depends upon moving away from useless confrontation and towards peace.

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Outlook, December 27, 1999

Nationalism

India: Darning a Patchwork Dream

By Mushirul Hasan

Irish Portal, a British civil servant, observed in the early 1940s, "you must never take land away from people. People’s land has a mystique. You can go and possibly order them about for a bit and introduce some new ideas and possibly dragoon an alien race into attitudes that are not quite familiar to them." But, he added, "you must go away and die in Cheltenham." That is exactly what the British did on August 15, 1947.
The new nationalism comes into play only when India is at war with Pakistan. Otherwise, it lies dormant.
On that auspicious day began India’s tryst with destiny and the quest for a new order. Doubtless, it was a tall order for a post-colonial country to meet the challenges of governance and nation-building. Yet the silver lining was that the legacy of nationalism was alive and kicking in a country bruised and fragmented by colonialism and the horrors of Partition. What is noteworthy is that nationalism in India and China generated not only powerful anti-colonial sentiments but also provided a blueprint for welding an otherwise divided and disparate country into a nation-state.
The chequered path of Indian nationalism, though marred by the estrangement of many Muslims, had its moments of glory. The degree to which the elites and the subalterns contributed to its making is debatable. But what is perhaps less contentious is that the idea of nationalism-howsoever fuzzy, shifting and ambiguous-fired popular imagination at several defining moments in the 20th century. In 1920, for instance, when the Mahatma’s spectacular mass mobilisation strategies paid off while his predecessors in the Congress were made to look silly. Again, when the same frail man marched from his Sabarmati Ashram with 78 followers to the shores of Dandi. This was nationalism, pure and simple, on the move.
In ‘51, Nehru said there was absolutely no reason why India’s infinite variety should be regimented in line with a single pattern.
The point is not to valourise Gandhi but to make sense of his political credo. Equally, the point is not to celebrate the Congress brand of nationalism but to delineate its characteristics. I hasten to add that the ambiguities of Indian nationalism were its greatest strength. Whether you invoke Gandhi, Nehru, Patel or Azad, nationalism did lend itself to several different meanings. This is not something to frown upon, because their discourses were, after all, anti-colonial in their essence. The evolution of institutional pluralism, democracy and political stability was not contingent on a monolithic interpretation of nationalism.
In free India, the finest hour in the tortuous career of nationalism was perhaps the drafting of a democratic and secular constitution with a pronounced egalitarian thrust. True, the notion that loyalty to the people came before loyalty to the party or government-in the 19th century European sense where nationalism was associated with the idea of popular sovereignty-did not find favour in India. Yet the urge to clear the debris of the Raj and to rebuild a new and dynamic nation-state was central to the post-colonial project. To me, these urges captured the spirit of nationalism.
Nehru underlined in 1951 that India had infinite variety and there was absolutely no reason why anybody should regiment it after a single pattern. This, if you don’t already know, is what secular nationalism is all about. As its chief proponent after Independence, the country’s first prime minister pursued not a typically Nehruvian mission, but a goal set by the Mahatma, by Congress’ secular flank and by the left-wing formations. This was a modern goal, rational and scientific, and in addition a specifically Indian one. These values should have been apparent to all and it was because of this that they were, for Nehru and his colleagues, both ultimate and the final legitimisation of the secular state.
Three notable developments took place late ‘50s onwards. First, secularism was assailed in different quarters both as an idea and as a state policy; second, the historical experience of resistance against colonialism was forgotten; finally, the ideological edifice of nationalism was undermined by the aspirations of ‘new’ groups trying to assert their linguistic and ethnic identities, and by the persistent failure of the state to reduce socio-economic inequities. As a consequence, nationalism and secularism became contested terms and were transformed from being anti-colonial to being ethnic and untutored religious consciousness. Hence the discovery of new heroes, the invention of new histories and the resurgence of ethnic movements in Kashmir, Assam and Punjab.
My real concern, therefore, is that ethnic collective consciousness in India manifests itself in politically violent forms, as signified by the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. My other concern is that ethnic nationalism, though objectified by perceptions of relative economic deprivation, easily coalesced with religious fundamentalism. This is exemplified by the murky career of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and the ill-advised policies of several militant outfits in Kashmir, including the expulsion of Kashmiri Pandits from their homeland. But much as one bemoans the absence of a countrywide vision anchored in social justice, one is also wary that the division of our society into ethnic communities will constitute a complicating factor in ‘nation-building’.
If the politics of ethnicity gained salience in the ‘80s, so did majoritarianism in the garb of Hindu nationalism. For decades, its protagonists had waited on the margins of political life to establish the illegitimacy of the Congress-led anti-colonial movements. Their other favourite pastime, for which they could draw from the writings of Savarkar and Golwalkar, was to rewrite the nationalist idea in order to impose a singular, monolithic Hindu identity and to establish an unbroken Hindu, as opposed to a heterogeneous nationalist, tradition. The demolition of the Babri Masjid- undoubtedly hastened by the hot-headedness of the Muslim secular and religious leadership over the Shah Bano affair and by the outcry against Mandalisation, was central to the fruition of the Hindutva project.
More than the mosque’s physical destruction, the ensuing religious mobilisation by the Sangh parivar signalled a two-pronged attack on the nationalist legacy. It was directed, in the first place, against Gandhi’s simple Ram-Rahim approach to the resolution of Hindu-Muslim disputes and against Nehru’s stubborn insistence on democratic socialism and secularism. Second, Hindutva as the new mantra of civil society aimed at wrecking the national consensus envisaged by the Constitution.
In India, the demise of inclusive nationalism has been hastened by, among other factors, the Hindutva bandwagon. It has, in fact, been replaced by state-sponsored nationalism that is exclusive and insular. It bears the imprint of an ideology that seeks to homogenise only a small segment of society around invented but divisive religious symbols and historical memories. It is narrow in outlook because the impulse for homogenisation itself, arising out of the tendency to stereotype or stigmatise the minorities, rests on misplaced assumptions about the histories of inter-community relations.
State-sponsored nationalism, orchestrated by the media, comes into play only when a nuclear explosion takes place, or when the country is at war with Pakistan. Otherwise, it’s dormant. Actually, what is flaunted as nationalism on such occasions is nothing but militarism. And once the booming guns are silenced, it does not take long for the deep-seated fissures in our polity and society to resurface. It does not take long for us to forget our war widows and leave our injured soldiers at the mercy of their relatives. And the eyes that shed tears in middle-class homes for the dead and wounded soldiers dry up. The stories of demolition, war, floods, cyclones and disease are over. The stories of life have begun, because the stories of life never end.
The hollowness of the new brand of middle-class nationalism is illustrated by our lackadaisical response to atrocities on women, dalits, tribals and minorities. We care for the soldiers in Kargil, but not for those killed in Sri Lanka. We build war memorials for our heroes, but take little notice of those millions who have barely managed to survive in the cyclone-hit coastal Orissa. We rose to the occasion when Pakistan invaded Kargil, but we have not responded well to the cry for help from Ersama. Yet our pride is not hurt. We accept loans from the imf and World Bank but refuse humanitarian aid from international agencies for the sake of national pride.
How do we travel into the next millennium with this baggage? The ride is bumpy; the journey hazardous. Yet this country of nearly one billion people will need to move into the open spaces, equipped with an ideology that draws upon the intellectual resources of the nationalist movement and, at the same time, takes cognisance of the world-wide currents of change. "Let us announce to the world," said Tagore long ago, "that the light of the morning has come, not for entrenching ourselves behind barriers, but for meeting in mutual understanding and trust on the common field of co-operation, never for nourishing a spirit of rejection, but for that glad acceptance which constantly carries in itself the giving out of the best that we have."

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ZNet, December 26, 1999

The Tragedy of Flight IC-814

Vijay Prashad

No one can guess the horror of Ms. Rachna Katyal as she sits aboard the Indian Airlines plane (IC-814) in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Recently married, Ms. Katyal was on her way home to Delhi from a honeymoon in Kathmandu when her plane was hijacked for a horrifying ride across southern Asia. Because her husband Mr. Rippan Katyal looked too long at one of the hijackers, he was killed and his body thrown from the plane. A few hours ago, Mr. Katyal was cremated while his wife was denied permission to leave the plane by those who still hold it and most of its passengers hostage.
After a period of speculation, reports now confirm that the hijackers demand the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani who has been in an Indian jail since 1994. This is at least the fourth attempt by Mr. Azhar's organization, the Harkat-ul-Ansar, to spring him from jail (a previous attempt, in July 1995, resulted in the death of several foreign tourists). Mr. Azhar, a professor at Karachi's Jamia Uloom-i-Islami, came to India on a Portuguese passport to coordinate the activities of two bands of extremists. First, those under the command of Sajjad Khan (or Afghani), a Pakistani with the Harkat-ul Mujahideen, and, second, those with Nasarullah Mansur Langaryal of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami International (founded in 1980 by the Jamaat-ul-ulema-Islam and the Tablighi Jamaat of Pakistan with the blessings of the US). The Indian security forces arrested all three in a fortuitous operation.
New Delhi Television now reports that one of the hijackers is Mr. Ibrahim, a brother of Mr. Azhar. The hijackers asked for the release of the Pakistani extremist (along with 160 associates), and their act has once more raised the question of Kashmir for the world. The Washington Post offered the following comment: 'Focused as it is on a Kashmiri separatist leader, the incident again highlighted the trouble that continues to plague the Indian subcontinent because of the conflict over the majority Muslim region. Most Indians are Hindus, and controversy over control of Kashmir has sparked intense border skirmishes with the neighboring Muslim state of Pakistan" (Howard Schneider, 'Jet's Hijackers Demand India Free Pakistani,' Washington Post, 26 December 1999).
Once more the US mainstream media fails its readers, but goes along the grain of US strategy in the region. To say that 'most Indians are Hindus' and to speak of Pakistan as a 'Muslim state' adopts the kind of ethnicist rhetoric of the right wing chauvinists in both India and Pakistan. India is a multi-ethnic state despite the shenanigans of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Islamicists in Pakistan face a civil society uncommitted to their bigotry. Furthermore, 'controversy over Kashmir' is hardly the reason for the border war of June-July 1999, since that violence was fomented principally by the instability occasioned by the nuclear tests of May 1998. The trials of Kashmir will not be solved by its absorption into Pakistan or by its formal independence (a position dropped by most former secessionists).
The US's idea of 'democracy' in such places is to preach Balkanization along ethnic lines, a racist notion that does not even allow for the multi-religious and multi-linguistic character of Kashmir. If Balkanization was a bad word until recently, Madeline Albright and the State Department seem to have adjudged it to be a worthwhile strategy in the Balkans itself. The military-feudal government of Pakistan uses Kashmir as a political wedge with which to create instability along its border with India. The bourgeois-landlord government in India, meanwhile, fails the Kashmiri people whose own voice is given no place in the discussions over its future. While India and Pakistan sit at a table and talk about Kashmir (in circumlocutions, no doubt), the Indian government refuses to talk to disaffected and alienated Kashmiris. The Left movement in India has as one of its principal demands the re-creation of trust amongst the people and the provision of 'maximum autonomy within the Indian Union' (from the Communist Party of India-Marxist). Religion is not as much a wedge in Kashmir as the lack of structures for political power and socio-economic development in the region.
People such as Mr. Azhar see the Kashmir struggle as an opening for an Islamic jihad rather than for the liberation of the Kashmiri people themselves. In 1994, Mr. Azhar told Pakistani Television that 'soldiers of Islam have come from twelve countries to liberate Kashmir. Our organization has nothing to do with politics. We fight for religion. We do not believe in the concept of nations. We want Islam to rule the world.' While once the Kashmir-based Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front fought for the development of the Kashmiri people, the Pakistan-based (and latterly Afghanistan-based) Islamicists fight without a program for Kashmir itself. Their struggle is already alienated from the people. However, the hideousness of the Hindu Right produces insecurity amongst many Muslim youth, some of whom turn to these well-funded Islamicist organizations to ease their own fears within their own land. This is the tragedy of Kashmir, caught as it is between the vise of competing, but still relatively marginal, reactionary forces.
The US now has Mr. Azhar's group on its terrorist list. Those notorious cruise missiles that struck Afghanistan in August 1998 killed HUA militants in Khost, as they trained for their various jihads. However, the activities of Mr. Azhar's group allow the US to further its strategy in Southern Asia, which is to ensure that the states there remain weak and, therefore, open to penetration by US capital. On 6 October 1999, Karl Inderfurth (Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs) told the School of Advanced International Studies that US attention was focused on South Asia for, principally, 'the economic potential of the regionI the South Asian region is potentially one of the world's largest markets, and commercial opportunities are growing. Liberalization is improving the investment climate for US business throughout the region. India is one of the ten major emerging markets, especially for the high-tech sector.' As the militants, the right wing and the US officials seem eager to keep the pot of Kashmir on boil, this will facilitate an active US entry into matters of state in South Asia (as it latterly has done so). Strong South Asian solidarity might block the will of the US, and it may even ask that the Seventh Fleet withdraw from the Indian Ocean and its Diego Garcia base (on which, more in a separate commentary).
Meanwhile IC-814 sits on the tarmac in Kandahar. The Indian foreign minister is recalcitrant to negotiate with the hijackers, since 'our position on terrorism is well-known.' The Pakistanis allege that the hijackers may be Indian secret agents whose mission is to embarrass Pakistan. The Taliban asks the UN to intervene, and Erick de Mul of the UN in Afghanistan frets about the situation. Images of the incident travels across the world. Reports of dangerous 'Islamic terrorists' revisit the kinds of stereotypes made common during the 1991 Gulf War. Context vanishes, as the US media speaks with a mixture of condescension and concern for the region. There is little concern for the alienated Kashmiris, for the failure of partition as a solution to the problem, for the production of more such crises through the failure of capitalist development that side of the imperialist curtain. The Katyars join a long line of the victims of the insurgency over Kashmir, one that will continue as long as the right rules the destiny of South Asia.

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Friday Times, December 24, 1999

Economic logic of national security

Ejaz Haider

Post-test sanctions definitely hurt Pakistan's economy. That is why, argues Ejaz Haider, strategy is too serious a business to be left to strategists

New Delhi is indicating it might sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty before US President Bill Clinton's visit to South Asia. This is a significant development and throws up the question of how Pakistan's must respond to it: Should it sign the CTBT before India does or should it adopt a wait-and-see policy?
An allied question can be: On what basis must Islamabad decide to sign or not sign the CTBT with or without India signing it? The strategists would refer to "national security" as the basis for any such decision. But what constitutes national security? Is it a narrow, piecemeal concept linked merely to the acquisition and maintenance of nuclear capability or is it a holistic concept involving a triad of external, internal and economic security? These questions are important since Pakistan reacted to India's tests last year without heeding the signals the economy was giving. After the tests, sanctions made an already precariously balanced economy keel over. It was only in November 1998 when Washington bailed Islamabad out that the economy could barely stand up.
The situation is still more or less the same and the country needs a bailout. Yet, strategists continue to put faith in the primacy of external security and link it to the maintenance of nuclear capability. Two different documents throw some light on what Pakistan bargained for last year when it followed India blindly into the nuclear pit. Their significance lies in how Pakistan must now factor in economy in any future formulation of national security policy.
While observing the impact of post-nuclear tests sanctions on the country's economy the State Bank of Pakistan's annual report for 1998-99 concedes the country suffered an acute balance of payments crisis during the year because of economic sanctions and other factors such as world recession. In fact, the SBP report records 1998-99 as "one of the most difficult years in the history of Pakistan".
This is how the SBP report puts it: "Following the nuclear explosion[s] by Pakistan in May 1998, the G-7 countries imposed a range of economic sanctions against Pakistan. The IMF suspended the ESAF and EFF programme with Pakistan as also the new Official Development Assistance. The pace and...level of economic activity [was] also adversely affected by a sharp decline in the private capital inflows and erosion of confidence. On November 12, 1998, foreign exchange reserves stood at $415 million." Such was Pakistan's dependence on IMF and ODA assistance that the situation eased up a little only after the "resumption of inflows of resources including reactivation of agreement with the IMF [and the] rescheduling of debt".
The SBP report reveals nothing new. But it is significant for one reason. It notes the precarious health of the economy on the eve of the nuclear tests and suggests that this factor was not taken into consideration by our strategists when they formulated their strategic doctrine of tit-for-tat nuclear testing last year.
Despite evidence to the contrary some analysts still argue the sanctions did not hurt Pakistan since it was already under US sanctions when it tested. Their argument is that the economic collapse was owed to years of mismanagement and was not the effect of sanctions. This is merely an attempt to paper over the conflict between strategy and economy within the narrow paradigm of national security that exists in this country and that is loath to assign the "economy" its rightful place. At worst, this argument tries to justify a decision on the basis of a flawed reasoning by twisting facts.
There is no gainsaying the economy had been mismanaged and was merely limping along when Pakistan decided to test but that is the whole point. Economic mismanagement had led the country to a heavy dependence on the IMF and following the decision to test when "the US-led coalition withheld IMF support, the resulting collapse of confidence created a balance of payments crisis and a significant decline in economic activity".
Contrarily, if Islamabad had decided against testing at the time and in the manner it did, it could have driven a hard bargain with Washington with economy being the centrepiece of any deal. Pakistan was barely afloat at the time it tested. The sanctions deprived it of the crucial capital inflows it needed to even stay afloat. Without the much-needed relief in November 1998 it would have sunk. At the time Washington waived some of the sanctions to offset a complete collapse of Pakistan's economy, the country's foreign exchange reserves stood at US$458 million down from US$1.4 billion in May 1998. Even the reserves on the eve of its tests were in short-term, high-interest commercial loans and equaled only about six weeks of imports. Experts say the country needed around US$2 billion in net inflows to avoid loss of reserves. It is difficult to see how anyone can still justify the decision to test on the basis of economic logic.
Perhaps the most comprehensive study so far on the impact of sanctions on India and Pakistan has been done by Daniel Morrow and Michael Carriere. Captioned "The Economic Impacts of the 1998 Sanctions on India and Pakistan," the study has been published in the Fall issue of The Nonproliferation Review.
Morrow and Carriere argue the sanctions had a "marginal" impact on India and a "significant" impact on Pakistan. Evaluating the broader issue of whether sanctions can be a disincentive to future proliferation attempts, they look at the cases of India and Pakistan and contend that sanctions can be made to work as a significant disincentive. Even in the case of India whose "foreign exchange reserves of US$26 billion equaled about six months of imports" - as opposed to Pakistan's US$1.4 billion - Morrow and Carriere argue the sanctions impacted foreign direct investment and would also have affected flows of official foreign aid if the sanctions had remained in place long enough.
However, in the case of Pakistan the Glenn Amendment-related sanctions as also other multi-lateral sanctions led to a complete collapse of the economy. The blockage of the IMF funding played havoc with market confidence, "which affected the capital flows, the exchange rate, and aggregate GDP growth in Pakistan".
Looking at economic indicators through the year, Morrow and Carriere establish beyond doubt that sanctions heavily impacted Pakistan's economy. "New private inflows virtually stopped. Foreign exchange reserves fell to extremely low levels. In early November, just before President Clinton waived a number of sanctions on Pakistan and India, Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves stood at $458 million, a dangerously small amount. [Given Pakistan's US$10 billion annual import bill this means import reserves for barely two weeks.] The open market (kerb) rate for the Pakistani rupee depreciated from Rs. 45 to the dollar in early May to Rs. 63 in mid-July - a 28 percent depreciation. By the end of 1998, when most of the sanctions had been lifted, it remained 16 percent below its pre-test value."
At the time Islamabad pinned many hopes on a relief package from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). Emissaries were sent to negotiate a deal with IDB and foreign and finance ministers made statements - that were obviously false - that the IDB had agreed to shortly release the rescue package. Morrow and Carriere say: "The delay on an IMF support package also thwarted Pakistan's hope of receiving financial support from the Arab world. A $1.5 billion rescue package, consisting of funds from Arab private banks and financial institutions and arranged by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), continuously delayed throughout the summer and fall of 1998, as the IDB tied these funds to Pakistan's need to straighten out its relationship with the United States and the IMF [emphasis added]. By September 10, 1998, all the IDB was able to offer was $200 million of its own funds."
The impact of sanctions can also be gauged from the manner in which the economy, especially the stock market, reacted to positive news following the July 16 Senate vote on Brownback Amendment. The KSE, which on July 10 had reached an all-time low of 777.26 points, reacted positively to the news jumping up to almost 7 percent. According to Morrow and Carriere: "This upward trend continued until the end of the week, when the market closed 14.8 percent higher than it had started at the beginning of the week, compared to a 6.8 percent jump in all other Asian markets."
The KSE also saw a rally during the two weeks leading up to the September 1998 UN General Assembly meetings on the back of expectations that UNGA meetings would result in easing of sanctions. The index rose by 9.8 percent. Later, on November 7, the KSE witnessed a 10.5 percent rise - the market's sharpest single-day rise since India and Pakistan tested - after receiving news on the waiver announcement and the resumption of IMF funding. Morrow and Carriere conclude their observation on the impact of sanctions on Pakistan thus: "In summary, because of its prior vulnerability, the Pakistani economy was severely affected by the withdrawal of IMF financing...and by the indirect effects of this withdrawal on other capital flows to Pakistan."
Clearly, the essential point in all this is that policy-makers need to incorporate the factors necessitated by economy into any formulations on strategy. In fact, it is a misconception to treat strategy and economy separately. The argument that "survival" comes before "economics" is not only flawed it is downright perverse because "survival" itself is not a narrow concept and is essentially linked to the holistic concept of national security. Therefore, any strategic formulation must consider economy as a sine qua non of the national security policy. Strategy is too serious a business to be left to "strategists", especially nuclear strategists, who have learnt the art of narrowing the concept down to nothing. There is reason to believe the present government is aware of this. Pakistan's policies have already allowed India to go on the offensive while the bomb, for all the fanfare, has failed to put the brakes on our downwards slide. One hopes the present government's emphasis on reviving the economy would force it to look at the concept of national security afresh.

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Indian Express, December 19, 1999

India to deploy air defence shield system soon

BANGALORE: India will soon deploy an air defence system complete with radar which can identify multiple targets and lock on surface-to-air missiles, a defence official said Saturday, reports AFP.
"The radar has been integrated with the weapon system and is undergoing field evaluation," George Cleetus, director of Electronics and Radar Development Establishment told a radar conference.
He said the air shield, to detect and shoot down enemy aircraft and missiles, would be inducted by mid-2000 and deployed around important cities, nuclear power stations and petrochemical refineries. "The multi-function phased array radar is called 'Rajendra' (King) and has been designed for multiple target search and track, multiple missile acquisition and tracking and command guidance of the missiles," Cleetus said. He said the radar would activate the surface-to-air Akash (Sky) missile, which has a range of 25 kilometres (15.5 miles), as soon as it locates an enemy aircraft or missile.
Sources in the Defence Research and Development Organisation said 'Rajendra' would consist of a radar and a battery of three to six Akash missiles. "It will help to intercept aircraft or missiles upto a range of 400 to 600 kilometres (372 miles). Each radar will have the capability to detect several targets because they are fitted with more than 4,000 radiating elements," a defence source said.
"The phase-shifters built into the transmitter and the radiating elements help change the direction of the electronic beam in less than a millisecond which will help identify aircraft performing stealth manoeuvers," the source added. He said the radar can also evade jamming by enemy fighter jets or missiles. "The radar and the missiles have been tested against airborne targets at different locations and its performance has been established," the source said. Akash has been tested 31 times in the past nine years and the missile can carry a payload of 55 kilogrammes (121 pounds).
India has an ambitious programme to build a full rack of guided missiles including the ballistic missile series Agni (Fire), which can carry nuclear warheads. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in August said India would push ahead with its long-range missile projects despite international opposition, mainly from the United States.
In April, India fired its Agni-II, prompting two ballistic missile launches by Pakistan. The tests sparked fresh calls for restraint between the estranged neighbours, which in May 1998 conducted their first underground nuclear tests.

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Indian Express, December 19, 1999

Yet another successful test launch of Trishul missile

KOCHI: The naval version of 'Trishul' India's prestigious indegenous quick reaction short range surface to air and surface to surface missile was successfully test fired from INS Dronacharya here this evening as part of its ongoing trials. Dr Siva Thanu Pillai, chief controller, research and development wing of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) told PTI shortly after the launch that the test firing of the missile today was to test its anti sea skimmer capability. Currently on here is the fourth test firing campaign of the missile.
He said the naval version of the missile which had been undergoing trials for the last several months was today fired against a floating incoming target. 'the test firing was 100 per cent success' he said. He said in its anti sea skimmer role the missile could travel just above the sea surface and destroy any incoming missile either from a submarine, ship or even from air.

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Dawn, December 17, 1999

Agosta B-90 submarine arrives

KARACHI, Dec 16: Agosta B-90 submarine, arrived here on Thursday, will be commissioned in Pakistan Navy fleet on December 21. Agosta B-90 known as Khalid is the first of the three submarines agreement for which was inked with a French company, DCN International, in 1994.
During the construction of the submarine Pakistani engineers and technicians got special training in France. The second Agosta submarine is under-construction at Pakistan Navy dockyard and will be sailed in the year 2001.
The third submarine is being built in a special design hall of the Navy's dockyard which at present is in the form of three modules.

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News Network Inernational, December 17, 1999

Russian KA-31 helicopters to be delivered to India

NEW DELHI (NNI): Four KA-31 airborne early warning helicopters costing 55.80 million dollars with tools, spares and ground support equipment are to be delivered by Russia to Indian navy in two batches, Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes told Lok Sabha Thursday.
In a written answer, Fernandes said payments to the supplier are to be made at various stages of production of these helicopters, each costing 13.95 million dollars. As the navy has been operating Kamov class helicopters since 1981-82, it was not considered necessary to test this helicopter in equatorial water in advance, he said.
Pinaka: A single barrel launcher of the Pinaka system was deployed on experimental basis during the Kargil operation, he said, adding a decision to productionise the system is to be taken only after it has been accepted by the army.
Terrorists: Government is aware that there was a concentration of terrorists belonging to various pro-Pakistan outfits opposite Uri and Poonch sectors during June and July 1999, the defence minister said. However, there are no reports to confirm the presence of Taliban forces for intrusion into Jammu and Kashmir, he said.
Howitzer: M/s Celsius of Sweden has offered for field trials of 155 mm gun mounted on a vehicle on "no cost no commitment" basis but no decision has been taken in this regard, he said.
Ads: Necessary steps to replace INS Vikrant and Virat have been taken and the construction of an air defence ship has already been sanctioned, he said.
He fruther said Russia had indicated that it would refit and modernise the aircraft carrier "Admiral Gorshkov" at a cost of about 549 million U.S. dollars, the Lok Sabha was informed today. Complete details are yet to be worked out, he added.
In addition to considering the offer of the Russians for acquiring the warship, the government is also taking the necessary steps to arrive at a precise cost in consultation with the naval headquarters and the Russian side, he said.
He said necessary steps are also being taken by the government to ensure the availability of spares, if the ship is inducted into the Indian navy.



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