China relying less on Russia for weapons, energy: think tank

China's dependence on Russia for arms and energy imports has declined and Moscow's position when dealing with Beijing has weakened as a result, a Swedish think tank said.

"Decreasing dependence on Russian arms exports and a growing number of alternative energy suppliers mean that China has taken the upper hand in the relationship," the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report released Monday.

A key to the changing dynamic, the report said, is that China "is today mainly interested in acquiring technology to develop its own arms industry," and so its need for Russian-made weaponry has diminished.

Moscow has proved unwilling to sell its most sophisticated systems to Beijing, because it fears China will copy the technology and then export its own product.

"The nature of the arms transfer relationship will increasingly be characterized by competition rather than cooperation," said Paul Holtom, who heads SIPRI's arms transfer program.

China's position has been further strengthened because its need for Russian crude oil has declined over the past five years, according to SIPRI.

"China's largest oil supplier is Saudi Arabia, followed by Angola, Iran and Oman," SIPRI said.

"In the gas sector, Russia's negotiating position has been seriously weakened by China's success in finding other partners, especially in Central Asia."

US-should-tone-down-verbal-assaults-Pakistans-Zardari

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called for "serious dialogue" with the United States on Sunday, amid a fierce dispute over US claims that his intelligence agency has links to Islamist militants.

"Democracy always favors dialogue over confrontation," Zardari wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece that decried the recent "verbal assaults" of some US officials against Pakistan.

"It is time for the rhetoric to cool and for serious dialogue between allies to resume."

Last week, the top US military officer Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen accused Pakistan of exporting violence to Afghanistan through proxies and charged that the Haqqani network, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, was a "veritable arm" of Pakistani intelligence.

Expressing regret over the growing tensions between the United States and Pakistan, which have struggled to overcome sharp differences to forge an alliance in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Zardari said it was the militants who had gained the most from the spat.

Iran equips marine forces with cruise missile

Iran has equipped its naval forces with a short range "cruise missile," able to hit targets in costal areas and warships within "200 kilometres (125 miles), the country's defence minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

"Today we are witnessing the equipping of the Guards navy and army navy with ample numbers of the Qader cruise missile," General Ahmad Vahidi said, quoted by his ministry's website referring to the elite Revolutionary Guards who are tasked with defending Iranian waters in the Gulf.

"It has 200 km range and has ability to be launched quickly against warships and costal targets. It flies in low altitude, has high destructive power, (and is) lightweight with high precision," he added.

He added that it could be fired from the coast or from vessels of different classes, increasing considerable the operational ability of the forces.

Long Range Recon Patrol LRRP, Vietnam War

North Korea upgrades jamming devices:report

North Korea is upgrading jamming devices to disrupt South Korean military communications, Yonhap news agency said, citing a defence ministry report.

The communist state has some 20 types of jamming devices mostly imported from Russia and it has been developing a new device with a range of more than 100 kilometres (60 miles), the South Korean news agency said on Tuesday.

Yonhap cited a defence ministry report to the parliamentary defence committee. The ministry declined to comment, saying the report was confidential.

North Korea is known to have deployed jamming devices to the heavily-fortified border that are capable of disrupting Global Positioning System (GPS) signals within 50 to 100 kilometres, it said.

The North is thought to have been responsible for the intermittent failure of GPS receivers on naval and civilian craft along the west coast in August 2010.

South Korea's then-defence minister Kim Tae-Young said at the time that the devices could disrupt guided weapons and posed "a fresh security threat" to Seoul.