Even as their foreign secretaries meet at Thimphu, Pakistani traders have urged the governments of Indian and Pakistan to boost economic activities to fight poverty and unemployment across the …

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Mumbai, India (AHN) – India is set to gate-crash into the exclusive three-member club of nuclear triads by 2012 with its first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, which is to be commissioned in either late 2011 or early 2012. Arihant means “destroyer of enemies” in the Hindi language.

Only three countries in the world currently have a complete nuclear weapon triad, which means the capability to fire nuclear-tipped missiles from land, air and sea. These countries are the US, Russia and China.

Indian Navy chief Adm. Nirmal Verma announced Thursday that the country’s crucial underwater leg of nuclear capability would be the third arm of the country’s nuclear defense, which is presently made up of road and rail-mobile ballistic missiles as well as fighter jets such as Mirage 2000s and Sukhoi-30 MKIs, all of which are able to deliver nuclear weapons.

Speaking ahead of the forthcoming Navy Day on Saturday, Verma said, “When INS Arihant goes to sea, it will be on a deterrent patrol. The triad will then be in place… the aim is to make it as effective as possible.”

The INS Arihant was launched in Vizag in July 2009. After it is commissioned, it will possess potent SLBM capabilities, which would complete India’s nuclear triad and bolster its position among the nuclear power club.

Speaking on this development, sources within the Navy said that Arihant remained a top secret project until its launch last year. It is first of three nuclear-powered submarines that India is currently building with help from Russia.

Clarifying India’s stand on nuclear deterrence, Verma also said, “We have a declared policy of no-first-use, but we have Arihant. We have a triad in place now, but we have to use it as effectively as possible. We have Arihant going within two years and there is progress in the project, despite some hiccups. We will be within time and commission the vessel by 2012.”

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Srinagar, India (AHN) – Chief Minister of the beleaguered Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, has written a complaining letter to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against the Indian Army’s very public criticism of his government and constant interference into the state policy issues. Omar’s letter to the PM is in response to a public statement issued by the Army’s Northern Command.

The controversial statement was released by Lt. Col. Pradeep Kochhar, Public Relations Officer of the Army’s Northern Command and was later withdrawn after facing this backlash from the CM.

In its statement, the Army has blamed Abdullah’s “political compulsion” to be responsible for government’s decision to reduce the presence of security forces from urban areas. The statement has also questioned “the talk of removing the AFSPA from Srinagar,” the AFSPA is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. While referring to a recent encounter with militants in the summer capital of the State, the Army had also asked “how will those in power justify to the people if there are a few more incidents like this?”

Clearly miffed at this, CM Abdullah said that instead of responding publicly to the statement, he had chosen to write to the PM asking the latter to “take up the matter seriously.”

Unidentified sources within the police and intelligence sources in the State have also expressed fear that thinning of security forces in J&K may be imprudent, even in wake of the political compulsions that Omar must have been facing.

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates Michael Grubb – Dubai International Airport, the largest in the Gulf, is outpacing the world aviation industry’s recovery this year as it capitalizes on its role as a pivot for business travelers arbitraging between a struggling Europe and the burgeoning economies of Asia. But analysts warn that Dubai’s success makes it a likely magnet for new competition.

Traffic through Dubai International rose by close to 16 percent in the first nine months of the year, well ahead of the 12.9 percent average increase in the Asia-Pacific market, making it the world’s fastest growing, according to Airports Council International. The pace of growth for Dubai continued in October, when traffic exceeded 4 million people for the second time ever, Dubai Airports reported Wednesday.

Aviation is a big and thriving business for tiny Dubai, whose economy is otherwise struggling with some $100 billion of real estate debt. Dubai is home to the world’s 14th busiest airport, just behind New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and ahead of Amsterdam’s Schiphol. The number of people passing through the airport in October alone was equal to more than twice the country’s entire population.

Dubai Airports has ambitious plans for expanding. Annual capacity at Dubai International will grow from 60 million passengers to 75 million next year when it dedicates Concourse 3, the world’s only facility dedicated to servicing the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world.

Meanwhile, a second airport, the Al-Maktoum International, is under development next door. Al-Maktoum began cargo operations six months ago and will be opening for passenger travel in March 2011.

Dubai Airports is expecting growth to continue at a strong double-digit rate in 2011, with annual passenger traffic jumping 13.1 percent to 52.2 million from a forecast 46.1 million for all of 2010. Dubai’s flag carrier Emirates is counting on its passenger numbers growing 10 percent next year while the discount carrier Flydubai forecasts its traffic doubling.

“Before the end of the decade passenger numbers will approach 90 million making Dubai International the busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, said last week.

But Dubai’s airports – and its airlines — are vulnerable to emerging competition because it is entirely dependent on funneling passengers from Europe and Asia through its airports and sending them on to their final destinations, he said. The airport has no domestic market and a tiny regional one. Indeed, measured by international traffic alone, Dubai rises in the world airport rankings to No. 6.

“They will have competition, the dynamics will definitely change,” Philip Butterworth-Hayes, lead consultant of the aviation advisory firm PMi Media, told The Media Line. “I would look at Indian airlines in particular. Once you have a strong home market like India, you have the ability to capture traffic.”

Dubai has not only benefited from huge investment in its airport and carriers but also from low costs, the absence of environmental constraints to airport expansion and its strategic location. Demand for Europe-Asian travel has grown as European companies focus sales on the growing economies of China and the rest of Asia while newly wealthy Asians have the disposable income to travel to Europe for holidays. Dubai is about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) from London and 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Shanghai.

Adding to world-class airports, Dubai’s state-owned Emirates airlines has been an aggressive competitor, taking market share from hobbled European rivals by adding capacity – the airline has the biggest fleet of the giant A380s on order – and is keeping fares and costs low.

But India could match many of these assets. Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital is about 7,200 kilometers (4,500 miles) from London and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from Shanghai, on top of being a business and tourism destination in its own right.

As India’s economy grows, demand for domestic air travel for its 1 billion people has also increased. Domestic air traffic in India grew 15 percent in October compared with a year ago to 4.6 million passengers, the government said last week. What the country still lacks to take on Dubai is a competitive airline to service an Indian hub, Griffiths said.

“If you were to have an Emirates-like operation in India, you could make it a major hub,” he said. “But they would also benefit from the presence of a huge domestic market.”

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Colombo, Sri Lanka (AHN) – In a drive to strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries, Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna arrived in Sri Lanka Thursday for four days of talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse about India’s concerns about heightened Chinese activities in the Southeast Asia region.

Even as China continues to bolster its infrastructure in the border areas surrounding India, Krishna will travel to the northernmost part of the island country, Jaffna, to open an Indian consulate office as well as another in the southern town of Hambantota.

Opening an Indian consulate in Hambantota is of significance because only a week ago the Sri Lankan government began work on the first stage of a port there. The port is to be constructed at a cost of $1.5 billion and all of its financing is coming from China. India believes that the project is an attempt by China to create a “string of pearls” of geographic influence around India.

China is also opening port facilities at other locations in the peninsular region that includes Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan, besides devising railway projects in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The Indian government is now trying to speed up its own set of infrastructure development projects by investing in port, power and railway projects in Sri Lanka. Among its projects in the island country are the financing of construction of railway projects in Sri Lanka from Omanthai to Palali and from Medawachchiya to Mannar through Medu. India is also developing a port at Kankesanthurai.

However, India’s presence is more prominent in the reconstruction work going on in the country, which emerged out of the cesspool of ethnic conflict after 37 years. Under the reconstruction work, India is trying to help Sri Lanka de-mine acres of thick forests in Mullaitivu and help internally displaced people rebuild their lives.

India is also keen to revive negotiations for a defense agreement with Sri Lanka and it is believed that in his bilateral meetings, Krishna will raise the issue once again. Besides meeting President Rajapakse and inaugurating the consulate offices, Krishna will have meetings with his counterpart, G.L. Peiris, and others.

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