Russian Oil to Flow to China Through Kazakh Pipes — Kazakh Minister
In addition to shipping oil to China by rail Russian oil will apparently flow to China through Kazakh pipes. China was only assured of delivery of 10 million tonnes of crude by rail next year and 15 million tonnes in 2006.
The 1,000 kilometer oil pipeline linking the Kazakh town of Atasu with China’s western provinces with the projected annual throughput capacity of 10 million tons “will be filled with Russian oil”, said Kazakhstan’s Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Vladimir Shkolnik. Shkolnik was speaking on Tuesday, October 5, at the international oil and natural gas exhibition in Kazakhstan.
Construction of the Atasu-Alashankou oil pipeline was officially started on September 28, Prime-Tass economic news agency reported. The first stage of the pipeline is to be completed in 2006. The pipeline is being built by Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company KazMunaiGaz and China National Oil and Gas Corporation (CNPC). As MosNews wrote in May, Nursultan Nazarbaev, the President of Kazakhstan already offered Russia a chance to export its Siberian oil to China using the oil pipelines which span Kazakhstan’s territory.
However, US fundamental interests in developing better relations with India are the necessary containment of China, and New Delhi's help in the war against militant Islamic groups - a need that is growing stronger due to the unstable political landscape in Pakistan.
Now it seems that India-Myanmar counter-insurgency cooperation could shift from coordination to joint operations on Myanmar territory.
If India who is falling more into the U.S. sphere of influence as a necessary means by which the U.S. might contain China manages to move from coordination to joint operations on Myanmar territory this I believe to be a recipe for some heavy problems.
China views the Andaman Sea off Myanmar's coast as an important source of oil to fuel the economic expansion of China's western provinces.
Another pipeline, though still being studied, has moved a step closer towards fruition.
This would link Myanmar's Akyab port to Ruili in China's south-west Yunnan province, conveying mainly oil shipped from the Middle East and Africa.
According to Professor Wang Chongli of Yunnan's Academy of Social Sciences, China is keen on the project because of Yangon's recent agreement to revive an old trade route that linked Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal.
Recent reports said that a group of Chinese engineers was at Myanmar's Irrawady River surveying the Bhamo port, which will be rebuilt into a transit point for goods headed for China or the Bay of Bengal.
'It's the attitude of the Myanmar government. Now they agree to have discussions. Previously, they refused,' Prof Wang told the media, suggesting that Beijing had put the pipeline on its drawing board. #msg-4186355
-Am
Indian troops poised to enter Myanmar
By Sudha Ramachandran
Jul 21, 2005
BANGALORE - Cooperation between the security forces of India and Myanmar in countering anti-India rebels based in Myanmar is poised to enter bold new phase, with the countries discussing joint counter-insurgency operations inside Myanmar - a move fraught with pitfalls.
The Myanmar military's operations against Indian insurgents in the mountainous region between the Arakan range and the Irrawady have by all accounts reached a dead-end. Apparently, the ill-equipped Myanmar army has not been able to withstand the superior firepower of the insurgents.
According to reports in the India-based Public Affairs Magazine, Myanmar's military ruler General Than Shwe has requested the Indian government for emergency military supplies for his beleaguered troops. Than has reportedly asked for helicopters, helicopter gunships, heavy rockets, navigation equipment and global positioning system devices.
While India is willing to supply the equipment, it is concerned that Myanmar's security forces are not trained to use the equipment. India apparently has communicated this concern to Myanmar and, as a way to overcome the problem, suggested that the equipment be deployed in joint operations with the Indian military.
Cooperation between India's and Myanmar's security forces in counter-insurgency operations has grown dramatically in recent years, especially since late last year when Than visited Delhi. During that visit he assured Delhi that he would not allow his country to be used by anti-India militant groups active in India's restive northeast, which is a cauldron of ethnic and tribal conflicts and secessionist insurgencies.
About 40 armed insurgent groups with a collective strength of over 15,000 are fighting Indian security forces here. Inter-group bloodletting is sometimes as serious as the fighting against the Indian forces. Several of these insurgent groups, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang faction (NSCN-K) , have set up bases and training camps in neighboring Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan.
India has been trying to get its neighbors to close down the camps and flush out the militants from their sanctuaries. In December 2003, under considerable pressure from India, the Royal Bhutan Army launched military operations against camps in southern Bhutan along the India-Bhutan border. Some 30 camps belonging to the ULFA, the NDFB and the Kamtapur Liberation Organization and others were closed down and about 600 insurgents were killed. While the actual operations were carried out by Bhutanese forces, India played a quiet role planning the moves, supplying weaponry, helping transport casualties and so on.
India's requests to Bangladesh to deny anti-India militants sanctuary on its soil have evoked no cooperation from the Bangladesh government. India is said to have provided Dhaka with details of the location of 194 training camps, but the latter has simply denied their existence.
Myanmar's response to India's requests for action on insurgent camps falls somewhere between that of Bhutan and Bangladesh. It has not denied the existence of anti-India insurgent groups on its soil. But its relations with India are not as warm as those between India and Bhutan, so it has been less willing to accept India's overtures for joint operations.
For decades, insurgent groups like the ULFA, the NSCN-K, the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), the People's Liberation Army and the People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak have run their operations from bases and training camps on Myanmar's side of the 1,664-kilometer India-Myanmar border. For many years, the military junta in Myanmar supported these insurgent groups, partly because it saw them as useful to pressure India, which was openly supportive of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy movement. Besides, there have been accusations in the past that sections in the military have strong interests in the lucrative arms-narcotics trade in the region, and have thus been reluctant to act against the insurgent groups as they are vital parts of the narcotics network.
In the mid-1990s, Delhi, driven by concerns over China's growing influence in Myanmar, began wooing the generals. This was also prompted by a realization that it needed their cooperation to fight the insurgencies in its northeast. It was only after India corrected its tilt towards the pro-democracy movement that the military junta signaled its willingness to address India's concerns. And the junta has made it more than obvious that its help in countering insurgents would depend on the extent to which Delhi moved away from backing the pro-democracy movement. This was evident in the mid-1990s when India and Myanmar launched Operation Golden Bird. Troops from the two countries trapped scores of northeastern insurgents in a pincer movement on the Mizoram border. About that time India conferred the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding on Suu Kyi. An enraged junta struck back quickly. It called a halt to the operations and even released scores of insurgents it had rounded up. Since 2000, relations between the two countries have stabilized, with India extending Myanmar economic carrots in return for cooperation from the junta in dismantling insurgent bases in Myanmar. Counter-insurgency cooperation has grown over the years. It has involved exchange of intelligence on location of insurgents and co-ordination of operations on either side of the border.
"When India launches operations on its soil, it alerts the Myanmar military, which then steps up combing operations in the western hill tracts," an intelligence official based in Imphal told Asia Times Online. "When the Myanmar army smashed ULFA bases long the Chindwin River late last year, India sealed the border in that area. Indian troops in turn have hunted down and evicted hundreds of Myanmar insurgents from Indian territory. Last month, at least 200 rebels of the Chin National Army were flushed out of Mizoram."
Now it seems that India-Myanmar counter-insurgency cooperation could shift from coordination to joint operations on Myanmar territory.
The shift would come only if the Myanmar military, which has so far resisted getting into a tighter embrace with India over counter-insurgency operations, concedes Delhi's reported demand that the equipment India supplies Myanmar be deployed in joint operations.
There is a question, too, of whether India should go in for joint operations inside Myanmar. Unpleasant memories of India's deployment of troops in Sri Lanka (1987-90) continue to cast a long shadow over India's policy towards involvement in conflicts in its neighborhood. There is concern that deploying Indian troops in Myanmar to oversee the use of weaponry could escalate into them doing the fighting, that this could find Indian soldiers fighting not just ULFA and other Indian insurgents, but slowly their allies among Myanmar's warring ethnic and tribal groups. There is a danger of India getting drawn more and more into Myanmar's internal politics and conflicts. India could end up in a quagmire that it could have well avoided.
But this is not something India can avoid at this juncture, say proponents of Indian deployment. "This is not an option any longer," argues a retired Indian army officer, pointing out, "If India wants to quell the insurgency in the northeast, the bases in the neighboring countries have to be shut down, and if Myanmar does not have the equipment and the expertise to do that on its own, then India should step in. Parallels should not be drawn between the situations in Myanmar and Sri Lanka as the circumstances are in no way comparable. In Myanmar, India would be deploying its soldiers to eliminate insurgents who are a direct threat to India's security and territorial integrity," the retired army officer told Asia Times Online.
Indeed, in Sri Lanka, Indian security forces went in to do Sri Lanka's dirty work with regard to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In Myanmar, if India goes in, it will be doing so to assist the Myanmar military to do India's dirty work, to do what is in India's security interests.
Senior officers in the Indian armed forces say they are confident that they will not be stepping into a bottomless pit in Myanmar. They say that unlike the Sri Lankan situation, where intelligence input was lacking and where deployment was not planned, in Myanmar the entry of Indian forces - should it happen - would be gradual and well calibrated.
Meanwhile, India is waiting for the junta's invitation.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
Myanmar tightens security, attributes blasts to terrorists
Note: In the report, the government said three exiled dissident groups, the National Council of the Union of Burma, the Free Trade Union of Burma and the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors, "have been recruiting terrorists, giving explosives training and sending demolitionists into the country enticing them with cash rewards to carry out explosions."
It is difficult to pinpoint where our NGO money is going due to elaborate filtering processes. For example Czech humanitarian aid agency People in Need is closing its operations in Russia's turbulent republic of Chechnya after the Russian authorities refused accreditation needed to work in the country, the agency said. People in Need is affiliated with US private and government donors. Bush is well acknowledged to use NGOs for ulterior motives. Sneaky way to get in the door. #msg-6343651
We are contributing to the NCUB who "have been recruiting terrorists, giving explosives training and sending demolitionists into the country enticing them with cash rewards to carry out explosions." As much of these ‘donations’ are under the table and Myanmar is our main focus, it is impossible to come up with the real amount we are contributing to these terrorists. China views the Andaman Sea off Myanmar's coast as an important source of oil to fuel the economic expansion of China's western provinces and Bush would like to control the flow of all oil. #msg-4186355
National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) $75,000 Special funds for Burma To promote coalition building efforts among pro-democracy forces in exile in Thailand and in the ethnic areas along Burma's borders. Through the NCUB's "National Reconciliation and Political Solidarity Program," the NCUB Secretariat will work to solidify cooperation with and encourage commitment to common goals among the groups that are important to Burma's democratization.
National Council of the Union of Burma - Foreign Affairs Committee (NCUB-FAC) $50,000 Special funds for Burma To conduct a diplomatic campaign in Asia that will build support for the Burmese democracy movement. NCUB-FAC will establish a research center in Bangkok dedicated to international affairs; organize meetings; maintain a database of foreign policy experts, journalists, and diplomats concerned with Burma; and establish and maintain a network of Asian NGOs, political parties, student groups, and regional associations that are interested in Burma.
Myanmar tightens security, attributes blasts to terrorists
AP , Yangon, Myanmar Monday, Mar 21, 2005,Page 5 Myanmar's ruling junta has indicated that anti-government "terrorists" were responsible for two bomb blasts in the capital in the past week.
According to a state media report late Saturday, an explosive device went off in a hotel in downtown Yangon earlier the same day, damaging a bathroom, and a bus was damaged in an explosion Thursday at a bus depot in the capital. Neither blast caused any injuries, the report added.
Following a tip-off from "a dutiful citizen," police disarmed a time bomb on another bus in the capital on Wednesday.
Anti-government violence is rare in Myanmar, where the military regime keeps tight control over the citizenry and punishment for dissent is swift and often heavy.
In the report, the government said three exiled dissident groups, the National Council of the Union of Burma, the Free Trade Union of Burma and the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors, "have been recruiting terrorists, giving explosives training and sending demolitionists into the country enticing them with cash rewards to carry out explosions."
The report did not directly blame the groups and no one has claimed responsibility for the blasts.
The public must help expose the "terrorists who are trying to cause panic and disrupt stability," the report said.
The National Council of the Union of Burma is a coalition of exiled political and ethnic minority groups opposed to the junta.
The government often accuses the Free Trade Union of Burma of planning terrorist acts, but the group mostly engages in propaganda and lobbying campaigns.
The Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors is a small, shadowy group that advocates armed action against the junta and was involved in two hostage-taking incidents in neighboring Thailand several years ago.
The news report also said that police had arrested Win Aung, 32, a member of the All Burma Students Democratic Front on Feb. 5 in southeastern Myanmar. It linked him with terrorist plans, but gave no details.
Security in Yangon has been tight since early this month ahead of Armed Forces Day, celebrated annually on March 27 with a military parade.
Residents have been reminded in nightly messages on public address systems that they must report all overnight guests to the authorities or face imprisonment.
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