HANOI—India on Saturday agreed to provide Vietnam with a $500 million loan for defense purposes, a further sign of warming ties between two countries in separate territorial disputes with China.
Bet the Chinese are happy about this one...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc also announced after their meeting in Hanoi that Vietnam and India have upgraded their diplomatic relations to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership from strategic partnership.
“Our decision to upgrade our strategic partnership to a comprehensive strategic partnership will provide a new direction and momentum to our bilateral cooperation,” Mr. Modi said. “Our common efforts will also contribute to stability, security and prosperity in this region.”
The alliance between India and Vietnam is set to develop further in the wake of Mr. Modi’s visit. India is negotiating to sell supersonic Brahmos cruise missiles to Vietnam, a deal that might also include the stationing of Indian technicians there to maintain the hardware.
Defense analysts say the weapons are ideally suited to taking out naval targets. In seeking to upgrade military capabilities as China improves its own capabilities, Vietnam has emerged as the world’s eighth-largest arms importer from 2011 to 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Military cooperation between the two countries has moved forward quickly over the past decade. There have been several high-ranking military exchanges, and in 2014 India signed an agreement to lend Vietnam $100 million to buy defense equipment.
Indian warships have also made a point of visiting Vietnamese ports, part of Hanoi’s own policy of encouraging more international navies into the contested waters of the South China Sea, where both Vietnam and China have overlapping claims to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. New Delhi, in turn, has made Vietnam a focal point of its policy to expand its economic and diplomatic ties in East Asia.
Vietnam and India on Saturday also signed an agreement for India’s Larsen & Toubro Ltd. to design and build vessels for the Vietnam Coast Guard, and to transfer shipbuilding technologies to Vietnam. The two countries also signed several other cooperation agreements, covering cybersecurity, information technology, health care, environment and naval-information issues.
The commercial relationship between India and Vietnam—two of Asia’s fastest-growing economies—is also deepening, aiming to triple trade to $15 billion by 2020. Indian energy firm ONGC Videsh Ltd. is working with Vietnam’s state-run oil company PetroVietnam to develop oil and gas reserves off Vietnam’s coast.
Preeti Saran, a senior official in India’s foreign ministry, told reporters in New Delhi on Thursday that negotiations have started for Indian energy firms to acquire additional exploration rights in Vietnamese waters. She also pointed to Tata Power Co.’s $1.8 billion thermal-power project in Vietnam as a key to placing India among the top 10 investors in Vietnam.
Still, China’s expanding influence both in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean colors Mr. Modi’s visit. India, too, has its own territorial dispute with China, with the two nations disagreeing on the exact location of the nearly 2,200-mile border that separates them.
Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor and a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy, notes that the Indian leader’s visit to Vietnam follows high-level Chinese visits to Pakistan last year, where China is helping to finance the development and expansion of the deep-water port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. The port is an important component in Beijing’s efforts to expand trade and influence across Asia and into the Middle East and Africa.
Mr. Modi leaves Vietnam today for Hangzhou, China, where he will join U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders for the Group of 20 summit.
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[Khaosod] A bomb explosion hit a train in southern Thailand, killing one railroad worker and wounding another. Police Captain Pramoj Juichuay said the bomb was placed on the tracks and detonated when the train passed over it near a station in Pattani province at around on late Saturday afternoon. The explosion blew the last carriage of the train off of the tracks.
The train was on its way from Sungai Golak to Hat Yai, near the border with Malaysia.
[GMANETWORK] Some Philippine officials on Saturday said the Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... Group (ASG), the Islamic Lion of Islam group notorious for kidnapping both Filipinos and foreigners, was allegedly responsible for a deadly night market bombing in Davao City that killed at least 14 people.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Ismael Sueno on Saturday alerted "all concerned units to be on the lookout for possible diversionary tactics to be carried out" by the ASG after the group allegedly grabbed credit for the attack in Davao City, hometown of President Rodrigo Duterte.
However, nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), also on Saturday, declined to confirm that the ASG was responsible for the kaboom in Davao City.
"That act of owning the kaboom is something we expect the ASG to claim," AFP public affairs office chief, Marine Col. Edgard Arevalo, said in a statement.
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09/05/2016 00:00 ||
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[GLOBALNATION.INQUIRER.NET] Sabah is prepared to face the possibility of people from the southern region or the hunted Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... members fleeing to Sabah.
The Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) is bracing itself for fleeing Abu Sayyaf faceless myrmidons into the state in view of the all-out war declared against them by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Esscom commander DCP Datuk Wan Abdul Bari Abdul Khalid said the state was prepared to face the possibility of the people from the southern region or the hunted Abu Sayyaf members fleeing to Sabah.
He said some of them had already entered the state and have family ties with the local communities in Sabah.
"We are keeping close watch and will take necessary action in due course," Wan Abdul Bari said.
Welcoming the action taken by the Philippines government against the Abu Sayyaf, he said Esscom was doing all it could to monitor the situation and keep tabs on the latest developments while conducting daily surveillance on the national waters.
He said the Esscom had daily operations on land and sea in the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (Esszone) to ensure that the state stayed safe from any possible threats.
Wan Abdul Bari added that Esscom personnel and assets had been directed to monitor any suspicious movements such as smuggling or possible cross border attacks.
Esszone covers an area of 1,733.7km long and 100, 000 sq km comprising 10 districts namely Kudat, Kota Marudu, Pitas, Beluran, Kinabatangan, Sandakan, Lahad Datu, Kunak, Semporna and Tawau.
On Saturday, Duterte declared a nationwide "state of lawlessness" following a deadly kaboom at an open-air market in southern Davao City that killed at least 14 people and injured 67 during a presidential visit to his hometown.
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[EN.ABNA24] It really disturbs Dr Zamihan Mat Zin when he sees Moslems in Malaysia gravitating towards a Wahhabi/Salafist brand of Islam.
This is dangerous and divisive ...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled... , he feels.
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[TODAYONLINE] Indonesia has incarcerated Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! another suspect who is allegedly connected to the terror cell that had plotted to launch a rocket from Batam to Marina Bay, a month after the authorities foiled the plan.
The 24-year-old, identified by the police by the initials LH, was arrested at an operation by the country’s elite counter-terrorist forces at a cyber cafe in Batu Aji, Batam over the weekend, Indonesian media quoted police front man Agus Rianto as saying.
A cell phone, one cycle of violence and a wallet were also confiscated.
The unemployed suspect was said to be part of KGR@Katibah GR, a group headed by Gigih Rahmat Dewa. The group is said to have links to Syria-based Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) bully boy Bahrun Naim, who has encouraged attacks on Singapore.
"LH was part of the group that was plotting an attack on Marina Bay," Mr Agus said. "He also underwent training using airsoft guns as preparations to go to Syria."
Indonesian police last month had arrested Gigih Rahmat and five accomplices who were part of KGR@Katibah GR on suspicion of being involved in the Marina Bay rocket plot. The arrests came amid mounting concern about the spread of Islamist ideology in Indonesia, the world’s largest Moslem-majority nation.
It was the latest terror plot in Indonesia, where there has been a surge in attacks and attempted attacks this year due to the growing influence of IS. The police later released one of the six after concluding he was not involved in the plot. Details of the alleged rocket plot, however, remain sketchy. It is also unclear what sort of rocket the group had planned to use.
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[Khaosod] A bomb explosion hit a train in southern Thailand, killing one railroad worker and wounding another. Police Captain Pramoj Juichuay said the bomb was placed on the tracks and detonated when the train passed over it near a station in Pattani province at around on late Saturday afternoon. The explosion blew the last carriage of the train off of the tracks.
