Indian Military

TOKYO: Exhausted engineers attached a power cable to the outside of Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant on Saturday in a desperate attempt to get water pumps going that would cool down overheated fuel rods and prevent the deadly spread of radiation.
Hopes were dashed of miracle survivors when it turned out that a story was wrong that a young man had being pulled alive from the rubble eight days after the quake and tsunami ripped through northeast Japan, triggering the nuclear crisis.
(Read: Japan mulls Chernobyl-like burial)
It said he had been in an evacuation centre and had just returned to his ruined home, where he lay down in a blanket.
Beleaguered Prime Minister Naoto Kan sounded out the opposition, which only hours before the quake struck had been trying to oust him from office, about establishing a government of national unity to deal with a crisis that has shattered Japan and sent a shock through global financial markets, with major economies joining forces to calm the Japanese yen.

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Saturday for common safety standards at all Europe's nuclear plants to avoid incidents such in Japan, which fears a reactor meltdown after a huge quake.
"We have standardised all sorts of things in the European Union -- from the size of apples to the shape of bananas -- and we could also really talk about common safety measures for all the nuclear centres in Europe," Merkel said in her weekly podcast.
Merkel said would put this on the table at the European Council meeting in Brussels late next week.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged Japan's Fukushima No. 1 plant, knocking out its cooling system and raising fears of a full-blown meltdown and radiation leaks.
On Monday Merkel announced a three-month moratorium on plans approved last year to postpone by more than a decade, until the mid-2030s, the date when the last of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors are turned off.
The following day she ordered the temporary shutdown of Germany's seven oldest nuclear reactors while authorities conduct safety probes.

LONDON: Pakistan has been secretly accelerating pace of its nuclear weapons programme and it has assembled 70 to 90 nuclear warheads as against India's 60 to 80, a Washington-based nuclear watchdog has claimed.

The Institute for Science and International Security has obtained satellite images showing that a row of cooling towers at Pakistan's secret Khushab-III reactor has been completed, The Daily Telegraph reported.

This suggests the plant could begin operation within months, allowing Pakistan to increase substantially its stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium, it said.

Work at Khushab-III has forged ahead even as Pakistan struggles to cope with floods that have inflicted damage estimated at 27 billion pounds - and amid mounting concerns over the long-term security of the country's nuclear arsenal, the report said.

Pakistan argues that its nuclear programme is necessary to counter the superior conventional forces of India, the report said.

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is laying out a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar military aid package for Pakistan as it presses the Islamabad government to step up the fight against extremists there and in neighboring Afghanistan, US officials say.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi were to unveil the plan Friday at the end of the latest round of high-level US-Pakistani strategic talks here, the officials said.

The money will be provided over the next five years under the State Department's Foreign Military Financing program that funds other countries' purchases of US-made arms, ammunition and accessories, the officials said. Precise details of what Pakistan will receive under the program were still being determined, they said.

The officials would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement, which the administration hoped would reassure Pakistan of the long-term US commitment to Pakistan's military needs and help it bolster its efforts to go after Taliban and al-Qaida affiliates on its territory.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's elected government will complete its tenure as there is no threat to democracy and the army has no intention of coming to power, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said.

"The army neither intends to come to power nor will it come to power. The judiciary is independent and pro-democratic," he told journalists at his official residence yesterday.

There is no threat to democracy as the civilian government came to power after making numerous sacrifices and winning the 2008 election, he said.

The army is part of the civilian government and is taking part in flood relief activities at the government's request, he added.

"Despite this if some people are engaged in a debate (about a threat to the government and the army coming to power), they are wasting their time," Gilani said.

He said those who consider the army and the civilian government as two separate entities are living in a "fool's paradise".

ISLAMABAD: The US will not accept any "slackness" on the part of the Pakistan army in the fight against the Taliban due to the military's engagement in flood relief efforts, America's special envoy for the Af-Pak region Richard Holbrooke has said.

"Neither the security situation has changed fundamentally, nor has the Taliban threat receded. With the Americans placed in a difficult situation in Afghanistan, we certainly will not like to see slackness on the part of the Pakistan army in the war on terror," Holbrooke told reporters yesterday.

Responding to a question about the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner's claim that Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar is in Pakistan, Holbrooke said, "Yes, the (US) Secretary of State ( Hillary Clinton) has also said the same thing, but I don't know where Mullah Omar is."

The US has always contended that Taliban elements who renounce al-Qaida would be welcomed back into Afghan politics, the visiting US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said.

JAMMU: The Indian Air Force today commenced airlifting raw materials from the Pathankot air base for constructing bridges in Leh district affected by devastating floods following cloudburst.