APSNet Semi-Weekly Bulletin, September 22, 2010

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APSNet 22 September 2010

  1. China suspends ministerial-level talks with Japan over boat clash
  2. Government unveils Weipa asylum seeker detention centre plans
  3. Super Hornets will put RAAF back on the regional front foot
  4. Afghanistan: Are we in this war to win it?
  5. Afghanistan: Digger’s angry email to be used in inquiry
  6. Nuclear power plants moved out of South Thailand
  7. 120 million Indonesians surviving on US$2 a day
  8. Howard-Bush defence treaty passes hurdle

1. China suspends ministerial-level talks with Japan over boat clash, Bloomberg News, 2010-09-21

Diplomatic ties between the world’s second- and third-biggest economies soured as China escalated a dispute over Japan’s extended detention of a fishing boat captain for a collision in disputed waters. China yesterday severed senior-level government contacts with Japan, halting aviation talks and suspending a meeting on coal because of the incident. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu pledged “strong countermeasures” if Japan failed to release the captain.

2. Government unveils Weipa asylum seeker detention centre plans, Jennifer Eliot, Cairns Post, 2010-09-18

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen yesterday announced that 300 single men would be housed at RAAF Base Scherger as part of a bid to relieve the strain on Australia’s overcrowded immigration detention centres. But only weeks ago, and on the eve of the federal election, the Government denied asylum seekers would be housed at the site after The Weekend Post visited Weipa to investigate claims that the base was secretly being upgraded. A number of accommodation blocks had been delivered to the site and a professional pig-hunter at the base had his contract revoked.

3. Super Hornets will put RAAF back on the regional front foot, Cameron Stewart, Australian, 210-09-18

Within two months, the second batch of Super Hornets will arrive from the Boeing plant in St Louis, creating the first operational squadron of the RAAF’s new jet fighter. At the end of this year, these initial 12 Super Hornets — the first of 24 — will take over from the grand old dame of warplanes, the F-111 strike bombers. The mothballing of the F-111 and the arrival of the Super Hornets, along with the new Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft and new air-to-air refuellers, marks a long-awaited turnaround in Australia’s air power capabilities.

4. Are we in this war to win it? Jim Molan, Herald Sun, 2010-09-22

Chief of the Defence Force told us last week that essentially we are in a new phase of the war in Uruzgan province. The Government must now match this with a new level of troops. At present, we do not have a strategy to win in Uruzgan: we have a number and a task. Government policy limits our troops to an unrealistic number for an unrealistically narrow task, while ignoring the rest of the province.

5. Digger’s angry email to be used in inquiry, Mark Dodd, Australian, 2010-09-22

An  email from a frontline Digger will be used in an official inquiry into the incident. It described as a miracle the fact more soldiers were not killed during the three-hour gunbattle around the hamlet of Derapet, 30km west of the coalition force’s base at Tarin Kowt. At least 30 insurgents out of an attacking force of 100 are believed to have been killed before the joint Australian-Afghan fighting patrol inexplicably broke off the engagement.

6. Nuclear power plants moved out of South Thailand, Watcharapong Thongrung, Nation (Thailand), 20-09-2010

Ubon Ratchathani and Nakhon Sawan are picked as the principal locations of five nuclear power plants, with combined capacity of 5,000 megawatts, said a source from the Energy Ministry. He cited huge local resistance in Nakhon Si Thammarat and Surat Thani, which made it impossible to locate the power plants in the two Southern provinces. Advisor Burns & Roe Asia earlier shortlisted Nakhon Si Thammarat and Surat Thani from 17 locations, as the two provinces can accommodate the light-water reactor (LWR) technology. However, the ministry’s officials have so far failed to reconcile with local communities.

7. 120 million Indonesians surviving on US$2 a day, Jakarta Globe  Antara, 2010-09-16

Indonesia has gained the notorious distinction of being among seven countries that are home to two-thirds of the world’s one billion undernourished people, an upcoming report reveals. The World Food Program Web site says 6 percent or about 14.7 million people of Indonesia’s population is undernourished. It also says 52 percent of Indonesians live on less than $2 (Rp 17, 980) a day. Of those, 35 million live on less than 65 cents a day and are classified as poor.

8. Howard-Bush defence treaty passes hurdle, ABC News, 2010-09-22

An important defence treaty between Australia and the United States has passed one of its final hurdles. The treaty was negotiated by former prime minister John Howard and then US president George W Bush in Sydney in 2007. US regulators still need to sign off on sales, creating a hurdle that military firms say holds up business. The deal would speed up the trade of arms and defence technology between the US and Australia by eliminating most export licences. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has now recommended approval of the treaty, which will need to be ratified by Congress.

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