Report: Russia delivers anti-ship missiles to Syria

MOSCOW - Russia has delivered anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria, the Interfax news agency cited an unnamed military source as saying on Thursday, days after a United Nations commission of inquiry called for an arms embargo on Damascus.

Economic and diplomatic pressure has isolated Syrian President Bashar Assad following a nine-month government crackdown against protesters in unrest the United Nations says has killed more than 4,000 people.

Moscow has spoken out against further sanctions imposed by Western and Arab League states, and it has defended its right to sell Syria weapons -- tens of millions of dollars worth last year.

"The contract was completely fulfilled, almost ahead of time," Interfax cited the source as saying of the deal, estimated at $300 million. The source did not say when the deliveries had taken place.

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said in February that Moscow was pressing ahead with the deal despite Israeli concerns, indicating the missiles might have been delivered earlier this year.

"This weapon allows coverage of the entire coastline of Syria from possible attack from the sea," Interfax quoted the source as saying.

Russia teamed up with China in October to veto a Western-backed UN Security Council resolution condemning Assad's government. Russia said the resolution could have opened the door to Western military intervention like in Libya, where it says NATO overstepped its Security Council mandate.

A United Nations commission of inquiry said on Monday that in cracking down on protesters, Syrian military and security forces had committed crimes against humanity including murder, torture and rape, and called for an arms embargo on Syria.

Earlier this week, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported that Russia planned to send its aircraft carrier and other ships to Syria.

Besides accounting for 7 percent of Russia's total of $10 billion in arms deliveries abroad in 2010, according to Moscow defense think-tank CAST, Syria also hosts a Russian naval maintenance facility.

Russia traditionally used what influence it still has in the Middle East as a lever indiplomatic maneuvering with Europe and in particular the United States.

Israel has voiced concerns over the contract for sale of the rockets, capable of hitting ships 300 km (190 miles) off Syria's coast. Hezbollah used a surface-to-air missile in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War to hit the INS Hanit warship, killing four sailors.

Jerusalem Post

Obama invokes Cold War-era national security powers to unmask Chinese telecom spyware

WASHINGTON: The US is invoking Cold War-era national security powers to force telecommunication companies, including AT&T and Verizon Communications, to divulge confidential information about their networks in a hunt for Chinese cyber-spying.

In a survey distributed in April, the US Commerce Department asked for a detailed accounting of foreign-made hardware and software on the companies' networks.

It also asked about security-related incidents such as the discovery of "unauthorised electronic hardware" or suspicious equipment that can duplicate or redirect data, according to a copy of the survey reviewed by Bloomberg News. The survey represents "very high-level" concern that China and other countries may be using their growing export sectors to develop built-in spying capabilities in US networks, said a senior US intelligence official who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak on the matter.

"This is beyond vague suspicions," said Richard Falkenrath, a senior fellow in the Council on Foreign Relations Cyberconflict and Cybersecurity Initiative. "Congress is now looking at this as well, and they're doing so based on very specific material provided them in a classified setting" by the National Security Agency, he said.

The survey went to dozens of telecommunications companies, software makers and information security companies, including some foreign firms, according to James Lewis, a cyber-security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, in Washington. Lewis said AT&T and Verizon Communicationswere among the companies that received it.

Several of the companies were hesitant to cooperate because they had learned the Commerce Department unit handling the survey had itself been hacked by the Chinese in 2006, creating the possibility that company data provided might become known to the Chinese, according to a former government official familiar with the discussions.

The Commerce Department refused a request by the companies for specific protocols to protect the data, according to the former official, who declined to be identified because the discussions were confidential. Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Dallasbased AT&T, declined to comment on security issues.

Edward McFadden, a spokesman for New York-based Verizon, said the company had received the survey and declined to comment further. Eugene Cottilli, a Commerce Department spokesman in Washington, had no immediate comment on the survey.

The Economic Times

US offers 'bunker busters' to United Arab Emirates over Iran threat

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has proposed selling 600 "bunker buster" bombs and other munitions to the United Arab Emirates, which lies across the Gulf from Iran, to deter what it called regional threats.

Iran is widely suspected of seeking to develop nuclear arms through a program that Tehran says is for peaceful power generation only.

The proposed $304 million sale would include 4,900 tail kits built by Boeing Co that turn unguided free-fall bombs into guided weapons and 4,300 "general purpose" bombs, theDefense Department said in a mandatory arms sale notice dated Wednesday.

The deal would boost UAE's ability "to meet current and future regional threats" and to help deter aggression, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in the note to lawmakers.

The BLU-109 "Hard Target Penetrator" bomb, or bunker buster, is a 2,000-pound (900-kg) weapon designed to smash into buried enemy command posts, munitions depots and other hardened targets before using a delayed fuse to explode.

Iran's nuclear facilities are widely dispersed around the country, some of them in fortified bunkers underground.

Boeing's Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, is a tail section containing technology that uses global positioning system (GPS) data to home in on a target from up to 15 miles away.

UAE operates Lockheed Martin Corp's F-16 "Block 60" fighter aircraft, the most advanced F-16 model flown.

Lawmakers have 30 days to accept or reject a foreignmilitary sale after formal notification. None has been rejected to date after formal notification.

"The UAE government continues vital host-nation support of US forces stationed at Al Dhafra Air Base, plays an important role in supporting US regional interests, and has proven to be a valued partner in overseas operations," the notice to Congress said.

The top US military officer said on Wednesday he did not know whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it decided to take military action against Iran.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters that sanctions and diplomatic pressure was the right path to take on Iran, without ruling outmilitary action as a last resort.
Jerusalem Post

Georgetown students claim China is hiding massive weapons arsenal in underground tunnels

China is hiding nuclear warheads inside a vast network of tunnels, according to a three-year investigation by a group of Georgetown University students.

The Asian Arms Control Project was led by Georgetown Professor Phillip A. Karber, a former top Pentagon strategist. The researchers say they identified locations of the tunnels by combing through hundreds of Chinese military journals and documents as well as studying TV reports and satellite images, according to the Washington Post, which broke the story Tuesday.

Their findings suggest the U.S. has greatly underestimated the size of China's weapons arsenal — but some experts have questioned the study’s methodology.

“It doesn’t make any sense to build ten miles of tunnels to hide one nuclear weapon,” Karber told the Daily News.

And ten miles is a drop in the bucket compared to what China has admitted.

In 2009, as the students were aggressively moving forward with their research, the Chinese military admitted to constructing 3,000 miles of tunnels.

The students’ yet-to-be-released 363-page report is causing a stir in Washington, and prompted a Congressional hearing.

The project has drawn criticism from some analysts for drawing on Chinese blogs and a docudrama about the Chinese military. A member of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Washington Post that the study’s methodology was “incompetent and lazy.”

"We’re not drawing conclusions from the blogs; they tip us off to areas for further research,” Karber told The News. “How can scientists make these claims when they haven’t even seen our sources?”

He added that the group studied about 200 hours of video, most of it from state-run television stations.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/georgetown-students-claim-china-hiding-massive-weapons-arsenal-underground-tunnels-article-1.985484#ixzz1fOFaTecH

US fears indirect effects of eurozone crisis

US policymakers see few signs of liquidity stress from Europe spreading across the Atlantic so far but they still fear a range of subtle and indirect channels by which the eurozone could drag the world’s largest economy down with it.

Those fears help to explain the Federal Reserve’s part in co-ordinated international action on Wednesday to make sure that banks have access to short-term loans in a range of currencies if they need them.
“US financial institutions currently do not face difficulty obtaining liquidity in short-term funding markets,” said the Fed in its statement. “However, were conditions to deteriorate, the Federal Reserve has a range of tools available to provide an effective liquidity backstop for such institutions.”

The concern is not direct trade links: US exports to Europe are such a small part of the economy that even a vast eurozone recession would barely touch US growth. Instead, the worry is over potential shocks to the US financial system.

“The danger for the US is not trade and, as far as the banks are concerned, it’s not even their direct exposure,” said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics in Toronto. “It’s more an indirect exposure.”

Even if a large bank in a core European country such as France were to fail, a widespread assumption is that it would be nationalised, and that losses to US banks would be limited.

The much greater danger is contagion via financial markets. Some Fed officials believe that repeated shocks from the eurozone, which have increased uncertainty and volatility in asset markets, are the single largest reason why US growth in 2011 has been so disappointing.

FT

Syria: 'Iranian, N. Korean rocket experts hold Damascus meetings'

Damascus, 1 Dec. (AKI) - Dozens of officials from North Korea and Iran have conducted meetings with representatives of the Syrian government in Damascus to help president Bashar al-Assad obtain weapons following the implementation of sanctions by members of the Arab League and other countries.

The meetings have been taking place in recent days, and were attended by experts in the production of rockets, according to Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah, citing unnamed intelligence sources.

"The Syrian regime is afraid of losing power so is asking help from these two allies to put in place whatever means are necessary, even if it causes many deaths," an intelligence source told the newspaper. "The only way to stop further bloodshed is for foreign intervention."

Around 4,000 people have died in a government crackdown against protesters amid the uprising that began in March.


IGN

Sen. Rand Paul the loss of rights under the new law