As in Mother of All Battles — to use an old SaddamH expression.
The Reds Are Getting Together as Sri Lanka’s Daily News reports under their own headline:
| The leaders of China, Russia and four Central Asian countries meet in Kyrgyzstan this week to pursue what is widely seen as an anti-US agenda, before attending large-scale war games in Russia to underline their group’s rising clout.
Presidents Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin will join the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek on Thursday for the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Founded six years ago, the SCO covers a vast territory including increasingly important gas and oil fields in Russia and Central Asia, as well as the emerging economic giant of China. The six countries deny forming an anti-Western alliance. According to the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, Liu Guchang, the Bishkek summit will discuss “longterm good-neighbourliness, friendship and cooperation.” But many analysts see the SCO as a growing bastion against US expansion into Central Asia and against Western pressure for free elections and open media. Even if the organisation remains loosely integrated and modestly funded, military exercises held last week in China and this week in Russia’s Ural Mountains — with SCO presidents due to attend the final day on Friday — show that intentions are serious. Under the innocuous sounding title “Peace Mission 2007” about 6,500 soldiers backed by planes, heavy weapons, and paratroopers are training to seize a fictional settlement. Most of the troops are Chinese or Russian, but for the first time all SCO member states will contribute personnel. While advertised as “anti-terrorism” exercises, the manoeuvres more closely resemble full-scale military assaults in built-up areas. |
The International Herald Tribune adds this tidbit:
| Representatives from the SCO’s four observer states, Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan, will attend the Aug. 16 summit but not the war games, Li said.
Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be attending his second SCO summit, is among those reportedly interested in joining the SCO as a full member. |
Some Islamic states are interested in playing MoAB with the “Commies”?
Half of those observer states have nukes and Iran is hot on the trail.
Speaking of nukes, will Libya eventually want to be another MoABite player?
Then how about this piece from “America’s Newspaper”?
| Libya is sitting on a stockpile of almost 200 barrels of uranium despite agreeing in 2003 to dismantle its nuclear program, the Daily Telegraph has learned. |
