Russia restarts Cold War patrols

Russia restarts Cold War patrols

Russia is resuming a Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Mr Putin said the move to resume the flights permanently after a 15-year suspension was in response to security threats posed by other military powers.

He said 14 bombers had taken off from Russian airfields early on Friday.

The move came a week after Russian bombers flew within a few hundred miles of the US Pacific island of Guam.

A few days ago Moscow said its strategic bombers had begun exercises over the North Pole.

Flexing muscles

"We have decided to restore flights by Russian strategic aviation on a permanent basis," Mr Putin told reporters at joint military exercises with China and four Central Asian states in Russia's Ural mountains.

"In 1992, Russia unilaterally ended flights by its strategic aircraft to distant military patrol areas. Unfortunately, our example was not followed by everyone," Mr Putin said, in an apparent reference to the US.

"Flights by other countries' strategic aircraft continue and this creates certain problems for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation," he said.

In Washington, state department spokesman Sean McCormack played down the significance of Russia's move, saying: "We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union."

"If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision," he told reporters.

One of the reasons Russia halted its flights 15 years ago was that it could no longer afford the fuel.

Today Moscow's coffers are stuffed full of oil money, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow, and the Kremlin is determined to show it is still a military power to reckon with.

'Shadowed by Nato'

Russian media reported earlier on Friday that long-range bombers were airborne, and that Nato jets were shadowing them.

Itar-Tass quoted Russian air force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying: "At present, several pairs of Tu-160 and Tu-95MS aircraft are in the air over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which are accompanied by Nato planes."

Nato said it was aware of the flights but had no comment on whether Nato planes were in attendance.

In last week's incident near Guam, the Russian pilots "exchanged smiles" with US fighter pilots who scrambled to track them, a Russian general said.

The US military confirmed the presence of the Russian bombers near Guam, home to a large US base.

Last month two Tupolev 95 aircraft - dubbed "bears" according to their Nato code-name - strayed south from their normal patrol pattern off the Norwegian coast and headed towards Scotland. Two RAF Tornado fighters were sent up to meet them.

Russian bombers have also recently flown close to US airspace over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6950986.stm

Published: 2007/08/17 16:37:09 GMT

U.S.: Americans tracking Iranian forces in Iraq

U.S.: Americans tracking Iranian forces

Meanwhile, mortar barrage slams into Baghdad, killing 12, wounding 31

The Associated Press

Updated: 11:02 a.m. ET Aug. 19, 2007

BAGHDAD - American forces are tracking about 50 members of an elite Iranian force who have crossed the border into southern Iraq to train Shiite militia fighters, a top U.S. general said Sunday. The French foreign minister, meanwhile, arrived in Baghdad on a groundbreaking visit after years of icy relations with the United States over Iraq.

In Paris, the foreign ministry said Bernard Kouchner was in “Iraq to express a message of solidarity from France to the Iraqi people and to listen to representatives from all communities.”

Merely stepping onto Iraqi soil was a major symbol of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s efforts to end any lingering U.S.-French animosities over the 2003 Iraq invasion.

In east Baghdad, a mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite neighborhood, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said, and a major battle raged north of the capital where residents of a Shiite city were fighting what police said was a band of al-Qaida in Iraq gunmen.

Separately, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose command includes the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said his troops are tracking about 50 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in their area — the first detailed allegation that Iranians have been training fighters within Iraq’s borders.

“We know they’re here and we target them as well,” he said, citing intelligence reports as evidence of their presence.

He declined to be more specific and said no Iranian forces have been arrested in his territory.

“We’ve got about 50 of those,” he said, referring to the Iranian forces. “They go back and forth. There’s a porous border.”

Iran denies accusations
The military has stepped up allegations against Iran in recent weeks, saying it supplies militants with arms and training to attack U.S. forces.

Iran denies the allegations and says it supports efforts to stop the violence.

The Bush administration is moving toward blacklisting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “terrorist” organization, subjecting at least part of the entity to financial sanctions, U.S. officials said this week.

A decision has been made in principle to name elements of the corps a “specially designated global terrorist” group, but internal discussions continue over whether it should cover the entire unit or only the Guard’s Al-Quds force, the most elite and covert of Iran’s military branches, which has equipped and trained Muslim fighters outside Iran’s borders.

Lynch, whose mission is to block the flow of weapons and fighters into the Baghdad area, said Sunni and Shiite extremists have become increasingly aggressive this month, trying to influence the debate in Washington before a pivotal progress report on Iraq.

He singled out the Shiite extremists as being behind rising attacks using armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which he said were largely assembled in Iraq from parts smuggled in from Iran. He also noted a marked increase in Iranian-rockets that have been increasingly effective against U.S. bases.

There has been an overall decrease in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians, south of Baghdad, but 46 percent of those were being carried out by Shiite extremists, Lynch said.

“The real difference now is we’ve got to spend as much time fighting the Shia extremists as Sunni extremists,” he said.

Suffering in heat, violence
Women and children were among the 12 victims of the mortar attack in eastern Baghdad. Some houses in the neighborhood were damaged, according to police, and witnesses said U.S. helicopters were hovering above the attack site.

Hussein Saadon, 56, an owner of a small minibus station, was soaked in blood after he drove four victims to the hospital. He said the district had been without electricity for several days and the people were suffering in the heat.

“It fills me with pain and anger to see an attack on such poor area where is no presence of police nor army bases or checkpoints,” Saadon said.

In Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said more than 1,500 people including sheiks and dignitaries had gathered near city hall to launch the counteroffensive against al-Qaida fighters who have been regularly firing mortars into the town and kidnapping residents at illegal checkpoints. Police said five townspeople were killed in the early hours of the fighting.

In central Baghdad, gunmen driving several cars waylaid a minibus headed for Sadr City, the capital’s Shiite enclave, and abducted 15 passengers, police said.

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URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20343131/