Malaysia Wants To Establish Good Diplomatic Ties With US

Prime Minister Najib Razak said in Tokyo recently that when the Malaysian Government wanted to establish good diplomatic ties with any country, it did not mean that Malaysia would kowtow or bow to the knee to surrender to that country। He said that in fact Malaysia did not kowtow to any country as Malaysia has its own policies and ideas.

Prime Minister Najib said this in Tokyo when he held meeting with Malaysian students studying in Japan। Najib said that before he visited Japan, has visited the United States. He stressed that when he was in the United States, he did not make Malaysia kowtowing to the United States as some people in Malaysia claimed and accused.

Bilateral Discussion
Prime Minister Najib was invited by US President Barack Obama to participate in the International Nuclear Security Summit। He also held bilateral talk with President Obama as sideline of the Nuclear Security Summit. While in the United States, Prime Minister Najib said he was pleased to meet with leaders in the US business and political circles as well as well known national leaders. Prime Minister Najib stressed that Malaysia was among the nine countries that President Obama has taken time to receive and engage in bilateral discussion. He said that to Malaysia, it was indeed an honor.

Prime Minister Najib stressed that such meeting with US national leader should not be construed and misinterpreted as Malaysia kowtowing to major power। Prime Minister Najib said Malaysia engaged bi-lateral talk with the United States because Malaysia has attained certain achievement and such achievement was respected by the United States.

Prime Minister said this in his speech at the gathering organized by the MARA Education Fund that managed to call upon more than 300 Malaysian students studying in Japan also some Malaysians who worked in Japan to listen to Najib's talk। When addressing the group, Prime Minister Najib said: "I think I did not kowtow to the United States."

Maintaining Hostile Attitude
Prime Minister Najib said perhaps he was different from other national leaders in the country। This was because he has chosen to have closer interaction with the United States.

He said: "To become intimate friend with them (the United States) or to become mutually respected friend is better than we criticizing them as what Malaysia has done in the past।"

In response to query that back in Malaysia he was negatively criticized by political rivals at the Hulu Selangor by-election campaign, Prime Minister Najib stressed that when he returned to Malaysia, he would point out to the fact that the criticism on him was baseless and not based on moral ethic. He said: "This is also the reason why I must work hard. I have gone to the United States, to Saudi Arabia and now I am in Japan. I want to rectify the wrong perception about me that has become widespread rumors."

Greece Faces Debt Crisis

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 transformed a credit crunch into a full-blown financial panic that all but brought down the Western banking system। Similarly, financial turmoil in Greece may seem like a technical problem but it threatens to turn into a human catastrophe. The country is laboring under a mountainous national debt of 300 billion, amounting to 124 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Bailout Package
A bailout package amounting to 45 billion has been negotiated with the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but there are big doubts about whether Greece can service that debt। Standard & Poor's, the international ratings agency, has downgraded Greece's credit rating to junk status. A credit downgrade means that a country is regarded as a riskier place in which to invest. Greece will now find it even more difficult to service its debt, as foreign investors demand higher interest rates. Stock markets fell sharply yesterday, while the euro fell to its lowest level against the dollar for a year.

Amid the concerns of British voters in the general election, high finance in Greece may seem a distant problem। But it matters for the entire European Union (EU). Political unrest in Greece is spreading. The country's budget deficit amounts to 13.6 per cent of GDP, some four times the allowable limit under the euro zone's rules (known with unintended irony as the Stability and Growth Pact). The Socialist Greek Government has pledged to cut the deficit to fewer than 3 per cent by 2012. It plans to do this by cracking down on tax evasion, reductions in public sector pay, a higher retirement age and privatization of utilities.

Credit Card Rates
Athens' austerity pledge is dramatic। As far as the financial markets are concerned, it is also not credible. Ten-year government bond yields have now risen above 11 per cent. Interest rates on two-year bonds are not far from 20 per cent. Ordinary Greeks will pay a heavy price and may seek to compensate with inflationary wage demands. The costs of borrowing for consumers and businesses are already at levels comparable to credit card rates in this country.

As the crisis has intensified in Greece, international investors have also become more worried about the debt positions of other economies in Southern Europe। Yields on Portuguese long-term government bonds have risen to almost 6 per cent, and in Spain they are above 4 per cent: the highest level since the euro was launched a decade ago. Both of these economies have structural problems -- Spain is suffering the aftermath of a crash in the housing market -- but neither is as extended in its borrowing as Greece. The fear of regional contagion is powerful, however, and Portugal and Spain have both suffered downgrades in their credit ratings this week.

There are two scenarios that investors fear especially। One is that the country will look at the fiscal retrenchment ahead and decide instead to default on its debt. The second is that it might then attempt to ease its economic pain by electing to leave the euro zone altogether.

Increasing Interest Rates
If Greece does default, the consequences for financial markets would be huge। Investors in the neighboring economies would flee। Contagion would spread to the bond markets of Southern Europe, pushing up interest rates and threatening what is at the moment a weak and uncertain European recovery. It would also be a further financial hit to international banks that hold Greek sovereign debt. In short, Europe might face not just the second bout of a double-dip recession, but also a second stage of the banking crisis. This is not only a Greek or even a euro zone problem.

Immediate Task
The immediate task is to ensure that Greece is able to service its short-term debts by providing the bailout money agreed in principle by the EU and the IMF। But there is an important obstacle. Germany, the biggest EU contributor, is reluctant to take part. With public opinion on its side, Berlin has delayed approval of the bailout package. You can see its point. Prudent German taxpayers do not readily understand why they should meet the bill for another country's profligacy.

However, the bailout is essential, and may well require substantially greater sums than the current package envisages। The first responsibility for coping with Greece's crisis lies with the other members of the euro zone, and Germany and France in particular. The episode illustrates the most pressing problem in today's global economy.

Boosting Domestic Demand
There are huge imbalances between countries that have high savings and have lent them out, and countries that have lived beyond their means by attracting those savings। Germany has been a beneficiary of these imbalances, by being able to grow through its exports while doing little to reform the inefficiencies of its domestic economy. On a bigger scale, this relationship also characterizes the economic links between the US (a huge debtor nation) and China, whose savings surplus was recycled in the US economy and sparked the consumer boom that eventually led to a crash.

If the global economy is to recover sustainably, rather than experience continued boom and bust, the imbalances will have to be addressed। The debtor countries need to save more.

The countries with savings surpluses need to boost domestic demand। Greece's crisis is in microcosm, and extreme form, a parable of the stresses in the global economy. A bailout is a palliative compared with these imbalances; but it needs to be done.

Unmitigated Failure
There is another reason that Germany and France need to aid Greece: they are all part of a currency union। Greece joined the euro zone in 2001; its experience has been an unmitigated failure. As its interest rates converged on the euro zone's at the start of this decade, it enjoyed a boom in consumption, for which it is now paying. But as Greece no longer has its own currency, it cannot ease the pain by allowing the exchange rate to adjust.

A currency depreciation would allow real incomes to fall, by raising import prices। But within a monetary union the only way in which Greece can address its debt problem is by a savage deflation. It will cause human misery.

Consequence of Euro Membership
If the principal countries in the euro zone wish the project to succeed, they cannot abdicate the responsibility for bailing out its weakest member to the IMF। The United Kingdom stands outside the euro zone, and that is where it should remain। Looking at the Greek situation and the constraints on Athens as a consequence of euro membership, the United Kingdom must surely count its blessings. But the stresses within the euro zone are not a major cause. The member states of the EU are the main British trading partners. If financial contagion spreads there, then recession will return here. And the next British Government, also contending with a huge budget deficit, will find its policy options severely limited in dealing with the crisis.

India Commissions First Indigenously-Built Stealth Warship

India has commissioned its first indigenously-built stealth warship with sophisticated features to hoodwink enemy radars and gained entry into a top club of developed countries having such capability। Inducting 'INS Shivalik', the first of the three-ship Project-17 frigates, at the Mumbai-based Mazagon Docks (MDL), Defense Minister A.K. Antony called it a red letter day for the armed forces. The 143-metre long vessel, with 6,100 ton displacement, has been designed and built in India. More than 60 per cent of its value was met within India.

Maintaining High-Level of Operational Readiness
Undoubtedly, the commissioning of the ship is a milestone in the country's warship-building capacity। He stressed the need for modernization of the country's dockyards to achieve international standards in construction. Although the Navy had come a long way since Independence, there was a lot to be done before it became a potent force. Given the multifarious challenges the country faced, the Navy had to maintain a high-level of operational readiness. The government sanctioned Rs. 1,000 crore for modernization of MDL, which on completion next year, would place it among the world's leading warship-building yards.

Shivalik class warships can deal with multiple threat environment and are fitted with weapon suite comprising both area and point defense systems। It has sensors for air, surface and subsurface surveillance, electronic support and counter equipment and decoys for 'soft kill measures'. Two more of the Shivalik class -- INS Sayahdri and INS Satpura -- would be ready for commissioning by November 2010 and mid of 2011, respectively.

Latest Stealth Features
INS Shivalik has the latest stealth features to outsmart the enemy with low radar cross section, be it of the hull, infra-red or sound signatures। It is a steep jump in the indigenous design effort of the Directorate of Naval Design that has since 1954 designed 17 warships of different classes with 80 units built out of them. Currently, there are four designs from which 11 warships are under construction. Although the Shivalik project took the Navy nearly 12 years from the drawing board stage to its commissioning, the new designs for warships the world over also had taken that much time. The total indigenous effort accounting for 60 per cent of the cost is estimated to be Rs. 2,300 crore per ship.

Shivalik class is equipped with a judicious mix of imported and indigenous weapon systems and sensors, including Barak surface-to-air missiles, 'Shtil' air defense system, rapid fire guns and basic anti-submarine warfare weapons।

The ship is powered by combined diesel and gas turbine propulsion system consisting one each of US-origin LM-2500 gas turbine engine and SEMT Pielstick diesel engine on each shaft driving a large diameter controllable pitch propeller।

Future Generation
With better modular habitation and galley facilities on the ship, including an electric 'chappati' (Indian bread) maker, the features in the warship would ensure that the crew was more comfortable while sailing। Shivalik would also be the first warship of the Indian Navy to provide for separate living rooms for women crew as and when the Defense Ministry decides to send them on board battleships.

Explaining the salient features of INS Shivalik, its Commanding Officer Captain M।D. Suresh said the warship was a generation ahead of the frigates that the country had. It operated on a leaner crew; its stealth features helped it generate less noise, reducing underwater detection, while the design deflected signatures.

The frigate is armed with missiles, has helicopter support, mounted guns and a combat management system that can effectively coordinate all weapons and sensors onboard, giving it the ability to deal with multiple threats. The warship can be on a voyage for three-four weeks without fuel replenishment.