• The Government is reviewing foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecom after the Essar Group notified it of its Honk Kong partner Hutchinson selling a stake to Egypt based Orascom. The Egyptian company is known to have links in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which could have serious security implications for India. Currently, the country allows up to 74% FDI but also requires details of investors with more than 10% stake in any telecom venture. While the nature of “links in Pakistan” is not known, the Government is trying to determine if there are terrorist links to Orascom. Taliban and al Qaeda are known to have invested in trading front companies in United Arab Emirates and other West Asian nations. India’s most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, is known to have many binami investments all over the Muslim world. India and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) believe Ibrahim is in Pakistan—a charge that Pakistan denies.

• President Abdul Kalam is traveling to Myanmar and would try to further the natural gas deal with that country now stalled because of unsure transport mechanism. Myanmar has the world’s tenth largest deposit of natural gas and is willing to sell the gas through the Arakan port. However, the transportation of gas is a major stumbling block. The three options are to either bring it through Bangladesh, North Eastern states and via West Bengal, or by ships after converting it to Liquefied Natural Gas. While Bangladesh has been reticent on the proposal to transportation of gas through their territory, the transportation through North East and West Bengal will prove to be prohibitively expensive. Transportation through ships may not be expensive but there is a significant loss from conversion into LNG. India has taken two oil exploration blocks in Myanmar. Other issues such as return to multi-party democracy, freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi may not feature in discussions. India will also set up a remote sensing station that will receive satellite data for civilian use.

Democracy, Politics and Judiciary

• In a major blow to the United Progressive Alliance and Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, the Gujarat High Court (GHC) restrained the Government from tabling the controversial Justice Banerjee report or initiating any action on it. The GHC castigated the Commission for “overreaching” by going public with its findings when the courts were still hearing and contemplating the validity of the commission itself. The GHC also said that the Commission is at odds with the constitutionally valid Justice Nanavati Commission, which has a valid and well-acknowledged charter.

• Police unraveling the terror blasts in Varanasi have found striking parallels between this incident and that in Delhi last October. The bombs were placed in pressure cookers and left in a crowded place to go off one after another. The Delhi police shot down two Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists; one of them has been identified as a criminal involved in many terror attacks. Varanasi police released sketches of two terrorists who allegedly left behind a pressure cooker that was later defused by bomb experts. Eyewitnesses say that the terrorists were well dressed, appeared well educated, and not local. Intelligence sources in Delhi say that the State Government’s lack of police presence in sensitive areas and “actionable intelligence” was the reasons for the attack. Chief Minister Maulayam Singh Yadav faced black flags and in some cases stones when he went to visit the wounded. An obviously shaken Yadav feebly asked people not to extract political mileage from the incident. Opposition parties Bharatiya Janata Party and Bahujan Samaj Party were less charitable—leaders of both parties castigated Yadav unstintingly for incompetence, lack of planning, and lackadaisical attitude even after intelligence from the Ayodhya incident showed LeT’s plans to attack temples and economic targets.

• Commander of US Forces in South Korea Gen. B.B. Bell said that North Korea (NK) is preparing to field an intermediate missile that could reach Alaska, Guam, and Okinawa. Presenting to a Senate Armed Services Committee, Bell said that with its “military first” doctrine, NK is starving its economy but fattening its military and attack capabilities. NK is also working on a three-stage rocket that could reach the continental US within a decade. Describing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il’s plan to unite the Korean peninsula as “self-preservation” tactics, Bell warned the Senators about other non-conventional weapons in its arsenal such as chemical and biological weapons. NK has the fifth largest army in the world with over 100,000 Special Forces and 250 long-range artillery systems.