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N Korea reports 2,250 US, S. Korea spy flights North Korea has accused the US and South Korea of carrying out more than 2,000 spy flights over its territory last year.
The official Korean Central News Agency, quoting a military source, said late Dec. 31 the combined US and South Korean espionage flights reached 180 in December to total more than 2,250 this year.
lire agency said the aerial reconnaissance peaked when US and South Korean troops launched “military exercises for aggression’ in August.
"Keeping pace with the US imperialists' aerial espionage, the South Korean military’warmongers let two or three RC-800 and RF-4C fly in the sky... for madcap aerial espionage every day in the year," it said.
Seoul and Washington say their annual drills are purely defensive.
North Korea has routinely reported the alleged spy flights, while US and South Korean military authorities have refused to comment.
North and South Korea remain technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty.
Currently, about 28,000 US troops support the South s 680,000 against any threat from the North's 1.1 million-member military.
Sotzce x r*.de(ensenews com
Japan's Fukuda on charm offensive in China
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda played a friendly game of catch during his visit to China on Saturday, a symbol of warming ties between the North Asian rivals despite a row over gas resources in disputed waters.
In a show of amity that would have been unthinkable two years ago when anti-Japanese protests erupted on Chinese streets, Fukuda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao both wearing baseball uniforms tossed a ball in a state guesthouse gym.
Fukuda, who took power earlier this year, has said he would not visit Japan's Yasukuni war shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of the country's militarist past, cooling tension over Japan's wartime invasion of China.
"The Chinese side has really welcomed that, this kind of attitude toward the history question. Because after Fukuda took power, he very clearly said he would pay attention to Asian relations, and in particular relations with China," said Huang Dahui, a Japan expert at the People's University of China.
“So I think this has given China's leaders certain hopes and expectations."
Talks between Fukuda and Wen on Dec. 28 yielded no major breakthroughs on another key issue dogging relations, a row over how to develop natural gas resources in a disputed part of the East
China Sea.
But both said talks had made "certain progress" and a Japanese diplomat said there was consensus to resolve the issue before Chinese President Hu Jintao goes to Japan next spring.
“We hope we can find a settlement acceptable to the two countries at an early date," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a press conference late on Dec. 28. He would not say when that date might be.
After his morning athletics on Dec. 29, Fukuda visited a Beijing elementary school where he was greeted by students. He displayed his skills at calligraphy and folded origami paper as students escorted him around the school and sang for him.
Later, Fukuda visited the northern port of Tianjin en route to Qufu, birthplace of the ancient sage Confucius.
The 71-year-old Fukuda had a tour at a factory run by Toyota Motor Corp in Tianjin and chatted with Chinese assembly workers.
Despite the new-found warmth in their relationship. some commentators said ties between the Asian powers were not yet in the clear.
“If not properly resolved, it will be hard for China-Japan relations to avoid some twists and turns," the Beijing Nevys quoted Zhou Yongsheng of the China Foreign Affairs University, as saying, referring to the gas dispute.
Source: mdefensenews.com
India cancels order for Eurocopter
Citing discrepancies in the evaluation process, India's Ministry of Defense (MoD) has cancelled the Indian Army's tender for 197 Eurocopter AS550C3 Fennec light observation helicopters (LOHs).
"The current request for proposals |RfP) has been scrapped. A fresh RfP will soon be sent out," MoD spokesman Sitanshu Kar said in New Delhi on 6 December.
Hours earlier, Eurocopter had issued a press statement denying media allegations that its contract had been called off and that it was "confident" of signing an agreement.
For almost a year, Eurocopter had made it known that it had almost secured the USD 550 miliion-USD 600 million order, even as its competitor, Bell Helicopter Textron with its Bell 407 model, claimed t have been unfairly excluded from the race.
However, in June, even as commercial negotiations were in progress, it emerged that there had been 'irregularities' in the evaluation process as Eurocopter had fielded its AS350B3 Ecureuil civilian variant for extended hot weather and high altitude trials in 2004 and 2005.
The final push came a fewweeks ago from India's corruption watchdog, the Central Vigilance Commission, which said it had unearthed "sufficient grounds' to scrap the tender.
Sixty LoHs were beingacquired in flyaway condition and the remaining 137 were to be built locally under licence.
Source: Jane's Defence Weekly