Posted on Dec 29th The shadow of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death hangs over Northeast Asia as leaders work to reassure each other of cooperation to ensure stability in the uncertain transition ahead. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak spoke by telephone with Japan’s Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, whom just a day or two earlier [...]

Posted on Dec 21st The death of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il over the weekend, and the uncertainty surrounding the transition of power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, has raised new questions about a project to pipe natural gas from Russia across the secretive state to its southern neighbor. Since the Monday announcement of Kim’s [...]

Posted on Nov 30th Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin will visit China and Iran in mid-January to discuss a U.S.-backed global missile defense network. “We are planning to visit both Beijing and Tehran soon under the Russian president’s directive, to discuss the planned deployment of a global missile defense network,” Rogozin said during a [...]

Posted on Nov 28th In 2007 news agency Kanwa exclusively reported from St. Petersburg that China would buy 4 arresters designed by Marine Engineering Research Institute and made by Proletarsky Zavod plant which produces all Russian arresters and arresting hooks. Earlier on, China had contacts with this plant purchasing constituent parts for Project 956E/EM destroyers. Kanwa reported referring to a [...]

Posted on Nov 17th The Asia-Pacific region is seen by most as the world’s new center of gravity. But with the Eurasian giant’s significant presence in the Far East, the emerging new architecture among Asian powers has prompted questions about Russia’s role in the region. The mutual threat perceptions between Russia and other Asian nations [...]

Nov 11th Russia has invited Japanese investors for joint development of the Kuril Islands, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday. “We have repeatedly told our Japanese colleagues to come, invest, carry out business there, and Japanese nationals will work there. This is precisely the joint exploitation of these islands,” Medvedev said. The row over [...]

Posted on Nov 4th The Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), Russia’s foremost national policy think tank, takes the imminent collapse of the North Korean regime as a given in a special report published recently. IMEMO concludes that Korean reunification led by South Korea coincides with Russia’s national interests. IMEMO spent years to [...]

Posted on Nov 4th WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials accused China and Russia on Thursday of systematically stealing American high-tech data for their own national economic gain. It was the most forceful and detailed public airing of U.S. allegations after years of private complaints. U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts said the U.S. must openly confront [...]

Posted on Nov 3rd The world’s nuclear powers are planning to spend hundreds of billions of pounds modernising and upgrading weapons warheads and delivery systems over the next decade, according to an authoritative report published on Monday. Despite government budget pressures and international rhetoric about disarmament, evidence points to a new and dangerous “era of nuclear [...]

Posted on Nov 2nd BRUSSELS - The world is heading for “a new era of global nuclear force modernisation and growth” despite anti-proliferation rhetoric in the US and EU, a new study says. The survey by the London and Washington-based think-tank, the British American Security Information Council (Basic), notes that every one of the world’s nine nuclear [...]