Indian Military

NEW DELHI: The nuclear information director of Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Hans M Kristensen, has sought to settle the debate on India and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by declaring that Pakistan doesn't only have more warheads and fissile material but also better delivery systems for such weapons.

Referring to a report in TOI last week, he said that India might again be discovering that Pakistan has a few more nuclear weapons than India. ``As far as I can gauge, apart from nuclear testing where India started first, Pakistan has always been a little ahead in warheads, fissile material and delivery systems,'' said Kristensen in his latest write-up for FAS.

The TOI report was based on a study carried out by Kristensen and Robert Norris which said that, apart from Pakistan having more nuclear warheads, it had fissile material for 90 more warheads. India, it said, had fissile material for 60-105 warheads.

Kristensen, however, went on to say that neither country can claim any nuclear moral high ground.

WASHINGTON: A delegation of senior Pakistani military officials visiting the US was deboarded from a plane, detained, "interrogated and rudely treated" by security officials after one of them made a comment to a flight attendant, prompting the team to head home in protest.

The nine-member delegation of high-ranking Pakistani officers boarded United Airlines Flight 727 from the Dulles International Airport in Washington to Tampa on Tuesday, but were pulled off the plane, Mike Trevino, spokesman for the Airlines, was quoted as saying by 'The Washington Post'.

He said they were deboarded from the plane after one of them "made a comment to a flight attendant."

The delegation was to travel to Tampa, a Gulf Coast Bay city in the state of Florida, to attend the annual conference of the US- Pakistan military consultative committee.

Though the spokesman refused to provide details, Pakistani officials said the remark came from a general in the delegation.

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's nuclear arsenal has prevented a conventional war with India and made the "nation walk with heads held high", boasts notorious Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, considered the father of Islamabad's clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

"Our nuclear programme has ensured our survival, our security, and our sovereignty ... I am proud to have contributed to it together with my patriotic and able colleagues," the man accused of running a nuclear black market said in a published interview.

"Yes, I fully agree," he said in the interview published in the inaugural issue of " Newsweek Pakistan" when told that most Pakistanis believe Pakistan's being a nuclear state has served as a deterrent to conventional war with India.

Asked to comment on the popular theory that Pakistan is a nation with no sustainable identity, Khan said: "Pakistan was not an artificially created country. We, the Muslims in India, were a separate nation with a distinct culture, history, social order, and heritage.

SNEHESH ALEX PHILIP LEH: A week after the devastating cloudburst in Leh, the body of a jawan has been retrieved from the Turtuk sector taking the army toll to 10 while 25 other personnel are still missing.

Official sources said the body of an armyman was extricated from the debris on Friday evening.

The armyman could be a part of the company posted in the area, whose camp got swept away in the slush following the cloudburst on the night of August 5.

With the recovery of his body, the death toll of army personnel in the calamity has risen to 10, the sources said.

The army has launched a massive rescue operation to trace the other 25 missing personnel which included two Junior Commissioned Officers of the Bihar regiment and one of Rajasthan Rifles.

The jawans, who were manning a post near Turtuk along the Line of Control, faced the fury of Shyok river on the same day when Leh was hit by devastating cloudburst.

The Army had sought the help of Pakistani authorities to rescue the personnel of 15 Bihar infantry regiment as it feared that they may have been swept away towards Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the deluge.

SNEHESH ALEX PHILIP LEH: A week after the devastating cloudburst in Leh, the body of a jawan has been retrieved from the Turtuk sector taking the army toll to 10 while 25 other personnel are still missing.

Official sources said the body of an armyman was extricated from the debris on Friday evening.

The armyman could be a part of the company posted in the area, whose camp got swept away in the slush following the cloudburst on the night of August 5.

With the recovery of his body, the death toll of army personnel in the calamity has risen to 10, the sources said.

The army has launched a massive rescue operation to trace the other 25 missing personnel which included two Junior Commissioned Officers of the Bihar regiment and one of Rajasthan Rifles.

The jawans, who were manning a post near Turtuk along the Line of Control, faced the fury of Shyok river on the same day when Leh was hit by devastating cloudburst.

The Army had sought the help of Pakistani authorities to rescue the personnel of 15 Bihar infantry regiment as it feared that they may have been swept away towards Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the deluge.

[Indian Express Limited] India last week finalised a $2.2 billion deal with France to upgrade its fleet of {ln:dassault-mirage-2000-vajra 'Mirage 2000} fighters, even as reports from Paris say the country has suspended the sale of electronics and missiles for Pakistan’s JF 17 fighters, supposedly under “Indian pressure”. While the IAF deal for upgradation of 51 fighters had been hanging fire for the past two years, sources said the Price Negotiation Committee last week finalised the cost. The deal is likely to be signed shortly.

[TOI] While Pakistan may have pitched hard with the US for early transfer of F-16 fighter aircraft and other sophisticated military equipment, a concerned India is learnt to have raised the stakes by indicating to the US that such a transfer may not go down well at a time when two US companies are bidding for the 126 multi-role combat aircraft tender floated by India. This $10 billion-plus tender is considered one of the biggest international military contracts in the world now.

Washington,Apr.5 (ANI): The United States will supplement its multi-billion dollar aid package to Pakistan with a series of powerful new weapons, including smart bombs, to help Islamabad crackdown on its growing militant groups. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have in recent weeks pledged further security assistance to Islamabad, in addition to the 7.5 billion dollars in aid over five years that the US Congress approved to fund infrastructure and education projects.