HONG KONG — When the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and four other American warships sailed into the South China Sea last week for what were described as routine exercises, the message was clear: The United States is the dominant military power in the region and plans to keep it that way. But numerous Chinese naval ships were operating nearby, the United States Navy said, noticeably more than in past years. A Chinese officer told…
Posts published in “Day: March 9, 2016”
U.S. Special Operations forces working with a widening array of partners are slowly tightening their squeeze on Islamic State fighters in eastern Syria —moving toward an eventual assault on the jihadists’ self-declared capital of Raqqa. The Pentagon’s top priority in the campaign against the Islamic State remains disrupting external operations against potential targets in the United States and elsewhere. Sources say that over the past 18 months, U.S. drone strikes and other direct actions have…
The writer is a retired lieutenant general of the Pakistan Army and a former federal secretary. He has also served as chairman of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories Board The fluid and evolving situation in the Middle East has explosive implications. It has reopened old wounds and ancient fault lines and reignited regional power plays, especially among Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah, on one side and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Gulf states and, ironically, Israel on the…
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finalised on Tuesday the strategy for his upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, where he is likely to define the role Pakistan will play in the 34-nation counter-terrorism alliance formed by the kingdom. Mr Sharif met his top foreign policy, economy, military and intelligence advisers a day before he and the army chief leave for Saudi Arabia to attend the concluding ceremony of the multinational counter-terrorism exercise — Raad Al-Shamal. Discussions…
ISLAMABAD: Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz informed the Senate on Tuesday that Pakistan’s nuclear technology is for its own deterrence and it will not share it with any other country under any circumstances. Giving a policy statement in the Senate on an adjournment motion to discuss a statement of US Secretary of State John Kerry that Saudi Arabia may purchase nuclear bomb from Pakistan, he said that it was not a…