HEZBOLLAH EMERGES AS PLAYER IN MIDEAST MISSILE PROLIFERATION

Hassan Nasrallah, General Secretary of Lebanon's radical fundamentalist Hezbollah organization, has revealed his group’s involvement in providing missile capabilities to Mideast terrorists, the March 17th issue of London’s Sunday Times reports. In an unprecedented public interview, Nasrallah divulged that Hezbollah has been actively attempting to redraw the military equation between Israel and the Palestinians by supplying terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad with short-range Katyusha rockets. The 12-mile reach of this weaponry, intended to supplement the indigenous missile capabilities being developed in the Palestinian Authority, will allow militants to target Israeli neighborhoods and population centers from within the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

RUSSIA MULLS NUCLEAR POSTURE

In the aftermath of President Bush’s December 2001 withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, a debate is growing in Russia over the future of the country’s nuclear posture. “The step taken by the Americans is strategic in nature, which is why it requires from us a strategic answer concerning our nuclear policy as a whole,” the official Rossiyskaya Gazeta (March 13) wrote in a recent analysis. Moscow’s options, according to the government organ, include “an independent nuclear policy” not predicated on arms control agreements, “a new full-scale agreement with the United States on radical reduction of nuclear arms (START III) and restrictions on the NMD deployment,” or a “framework agreement” based on transparency in missile defense development and an agreed-upon scope of defenses. Echoing the Putin government’s official stance, the newspaper expressed its support of a post-ABM framework accord, which would allow Russia to “retain considerable independence of its nuclear policy and at the same time attain restrictions on the development of US strategic - offensive and defensive - programmes.” Notably, however, other corners of the Russian political spectrum have called for a harder-line approach – the bolstering of Russia’s nuclear capabilities in the face of American missile defense efforts. “If you build up the shield, we will build up the sword,” the Associated Press (March 19) quotes Gen. Andrei Nikolayev, head of the Duma defense committee, as saying recently.

WASHINGTON FORGES AHEAD WITH GROUND-BASED DEFENSES

The Defense Department has charted a success with its latest missile defense test. In a trial conducted on March 15th, the Pentagon’s ground-based midcourse system – based on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands – successfully intercepted a rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Associated Press reports. The test, the sixth for the ground-based component of America’s missile defense initiative, added a level of complexity to previous intercepts by increasing the number of decoys deployed by the incoming rocket. A subsequent Defense Department press release termed the test to be “a major step in our aggressive developmental test program” of a system to protect the U.S. from ballistic missile attack.

NEW WORRIES OVER NORTH KOREA

In the wake of new revelations from the intelligence community, American lawmakers are expressing alarm over the advanced state of North Korea’s ballistic missile program, Middle East Newsline (March 18) reports. Pyongyang has not tested any ICBMs since 1998, and has extended its self-imposed moratorium on ballistic missile launches until 2003. Yet American officials remain convinced that North Korea has continued work on its nuclear-capable “Taepo-Dong 2” ICBM, which has a range of up to 10,000 kilometers and can hit the continental United States. Now, the multi-stage missile could be “ready for flight testing,” said Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), a member of the Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services, which received a briefing on emerging ballistic missile threats from CIA experts last week.

NEW DELHI READIES NEW ROCKETS

Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes has revealed that New Delhi's “Agni-II” ballistic missile is being phased into use, according to the Press Trust of India (March 14). In a report to India’s lower house of parliament, Fernandes stated that the rocket, which boasts a 2,000 kilometer range, is being tailored to the specifications of India’s armed forces and is currently in production. India is also moving forward with its work on the shorter-range, nuclear-capable “Agni-III” ballistic missile. Agence France Presse (March 18) cites V.K. Aatre, a scientific adviser to the Indian Defense Minister, as confirming that the 700 kilometer range rocket, currently in development, is expected to be tested within three months.

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