UPI Hears:

India follows own path in Asia

As President George Bush begins his visit to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic summit next week he's finding one partner, India, forging its own course.

Fed up with being cast as America's regional balancer to the growing power of China, when the U.S. ducks serious talks on a NATO-style security system for Asia, India is making its own deals.

India has just hosted Singapore's defense minister Teo Chee Hean to sign a new defense accord that will help them jointly secure the crucial Malabar Straits. India has also finally agreed that it will sign the deal to acquire the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorchkov when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visits Moscow November 11.

At the same time, India has signaled a readiness for friendly military relations with China. India's candid defense minister, George Fernandes, best known for his public statement that India's nuclear weapons were aimed at China rather than at puny Pakistan, has said "the time has come" for Sino-Indian joint military exercises.

"Such exercises are held with friends when possible and where suitable," Fernandes said, evidently feeling more secure now that the deal is complete for India to get advanced AWACS aircraft. (They are buying the Israeli Phalcon system, with U.S. approval, aboard a Russian-made Ilyushin airframe.)

The immediate response from a nervous Pakistan was a statement from Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Shahid Karimullah that he expects to sign a memorandum of understanding in Beijing next month to purchase Chinese frigates.

Malaysia Muslim premier lashes out at Jews

Malaysia's departing premier Mahathir Mohammed opened a Muslim meeting with one of the nastier anti-Jewish public speeches since the demise of Adolf Hitler.

Speaking to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Mahathir issued a call to Islamic arms, saying, "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way."

With 57 Islamic nations attending (along with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, whose Islamic credentials do not stretch far beyond the Muslim Chechens his troops are persecuting), Mahathir gave his fellow Muslims the ultimate conspiracy theory.

"The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy," he said. "They get others to fight and die for them. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking. They invented Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others.

"With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power."

Mahathir's counter strategy was simple; do not bother to fight "the enemy," but deploy the political, economic and demographic power of the Islamic world to bring "final victory." At least he didn't call it a final solution.

Queen Elizabeth frets over EU constitution

Queen Elizabeth appears to be fretting over just where she stands in the proposed European Union constitution.

It began with discreet but worried soundings by Buckingham Palace courtiers of academics, lawyers and constitutional experts, asking just what might be the implications for the Queen.

But now Britain's Daily Telegraph reports that Queen Elizabeth II's staff has asked her government for "documents highlighting the constitutional implications of the EU's plans."

The queen's concern is with the draft Article 10, which says "The constitution and law adopted by the union's institutions in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the member states."

This implies that the queen, even when signing into law Acts of Parliament, would no longer be sovereign in Britain - and Her Majesty's displeasure could be very bad news for Tony Blair.

Syria prepares for U.S. wrath

Since the State Department's John Bolton called Syria a member of the "axis of evil" before Congress, the Syrians are turning to the Russians for protection.

And the Russians look only too ready to help. Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Moskovsky this week said he "would not exclude" the export of Russia's new super-missile Iskander-E to traditional customers like Iran and Syria. The Iskander-E, a highly accurate and extremely mobile surface-to-surface missile, was developed specifically to beat American anti-missile systems like the Patriot 3 and Israel's Arrow.

Moskovsky said the Iskander-E will complete its testing program by the end of this year. Designed to come just within the legal limits of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, it can deliver multiple warheads up to 150 miles, and makes Iraq's old Scud missiles look like so many catapults.

Proud designer Nikolai Gushchin of the KBM Engineering Design Bureau at Kolomna calls it "the missile system of the 21st century."