Chinese military leadership reshuffle
China’s conference, “PLA in the Next Decade,” held on Monday revealed plans to modernise and change the top leadership reshaping the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in 2012. Vice President Xi Jinping is expected to replace Hu Jintao as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary general and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). One researcher at the conference described Xi Jinping, vice chairman of the CMC and well known for his hard-line pragmatic leadership…
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NATO officials state they will not use the Libya ‘template’ to resolve the violence in Syria asserting that any Syrian mission plan currently lacks international consensus and broader regional support. One NATO official reported “We would need a clear mandate from the international community, as well as support from the Arab League and Syria’s neighbours,” adding, thus far, “no-one has asked” for NATO’s help. Reluctance to take action is sustained by fears of entering into “another Afghanistan” without UN backing…
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U.S. seeks aid from Pakistan
Washington moved to kick-start reconciliation talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan by continuing air and ground strikes against the Haqqani network and the Taliban, with an insistence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency brings them to the negotiating table. In addition, the Obama administration said it is pressing the Pakistanis to provide intelligence on the Haqqanis, arrest operatives and reduce ties to the terrorist group.
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China successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft Tuesday morning to carry out the country’s first space docking mission as part of ambitious plans for a manned space programme. The Shenzhou 8 was launched at dawn from the northern Gobi desert, entering orbit successfully, and is due to dock with the Tiangong 1 module by Thursday more than 200 miles above Earth. . Zhou Jianping, the chief designer of China’s manned space engineering project told reporters…
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the US are trying to intensify the deadlocked US-Russian cooperation on missile defence and have invited Russian defence officials to visit the US Missile Defence Agency (MDA) base in Colorado. After NATO and Russia agreed on missile defence cooperation at NATO’s 2010 Lisbon Summit and despite efforts by the Obama administration to “reset” the US-Russian relationship …
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