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Strategies & Market Trends : True face of China -- A Modern Kaleidoscope -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (588)	11/14/2006 6:01:55 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12464

China pressing Russia on Pak fighter project C Raja Mohan Posted online: Monday, November 13, 2006 at 0000 hrs indianexpress.com Sino-Pak Ties: Pressure on Moscow for early decision on sale of RD 93 engines for the JF-17 Thunder Jet NEW DELHI, November 12: As President Hu Jintao prepares to visit Islamabad later this month, Beijing has stepped up political pressure on Moscow to let it equip Pakistani fighter aircraft JF-17 Thunder Jets with Russian engines. ‘Pakistani Taliban’ says behind suicide attack42 Pak soldiers killed in NWFP suicide attack Clerics sully image of Islam, says MusharrafPak mosque victims were all teens: daily‘Zawahiri was training bombers at Bajur school’ Russia has already agreed to supply Klimov RD-93 engines to the JF-17s being produced in China. Serial production of the JF-17 reportedly began earlier this year. Pakistan plans to buy 150-200 JF-17s in the coming years. Russian policy prohibits the re-export of Russian-origin equipment to third countries. For now, Pakistan is not on the list of countries that Russia exports arms to. Without Russian engines, Pakistan’s JF-17s will not fly. Moscow’s decision to release the engines would underline three big political setbacks for India. Under pressure from New Delhi, which has bought billions of dollars worth of Russian arms over the last four decades, Moscow has held back from selling arms to Pakistan. While India was willing to swallow the resumed military relationship between Russia and China in the last decade, it will find it hard to accept Russian arms supplies to Pakistan. The JF-17’s take-off in Pakistan, with Russian assistance, would showcase the Indian failure to get the much talked about Light Combat Aircraft off the ground. The LCA, christened “Tejas”, was launched before China and Pakistan unveiled their plans for JF-17. Worse still, Russian cooperation will allow China and Pakistan to leverage the JF-17 as a means to expand political influence with the security establishments in Asia, Africa and Latin America. China and Pakistan consciously designed the JF 17 for export. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Egypt, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe are among the countries that have shown interest in buying the JF-17. At the Karachi Military Exhibition later this month, China and Pakistan are expected to make formal presentations on the JF-17. Russia is aware the sale of engines to Pak JF-17s is bound to anger India. At the same time Moscow knows refusal to sell the engines to Pakistan will upset China. Beijing is now Moscow’s strategic partner, and trade and defence cooperation between the two countries has rapidly grown in recent years. Reports from Moscow suggest China has been pressing Russia for an early decision on the sale of RD-93 engines. Though Russian officials insist no decision has been made on military cooperation with Pakistan, they have not denied China’s request on RD-93 re-export is under active consideration. China’s own political prestige is at stake in ensuring the Russian sale of engines to JF-17, which has emerged as a symbol of the “all weather friendship” between Beijing and Islamabad. In his Independence Day speech on August 14, President Pervez Musharraf announced the JF-17s would be flying in Pakistani skies by March 2007. Earlier, Musharraf visited the JF-17 assembly line in China and praised the project as a “leap forward” in Sino-Pak military cooperation. Jointly developed by the China’s Chengdu Aircraft Industries Corporation and Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, the JF-17 was conceived as a light fighter, with advanced technologies, the cost of developing it split between the two countries. American aerospace companies were expected to join in the project. But military sanctions against China following the Tiananmen incidents in 1989, forced Beijing and Islamabad to turn elsewhere. Russian design bureaus participated in the development of the JF-17 airframe. raja.mohan@expressindia.com