International Slipstream

In what is seen as Moscow’s response to Washington’s Missile Defence Programme, Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov recently said his country would retain its Satan and Scalpel missiles. This is against the intent Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president George Bush had voiced in May this year, to reduce their nuclear arsenals. Under START II, which was never implemented, Russia was to reduce its 154 Satan missiles—each carrying 10 nuclear warheads—which form the basis of its Strategic Nuclear Force. Satan because it has decoys which can slip through a missile defence. Perhaps the decision to retain these is more linked to the prohibitive cost of acquiring Topol M missiles, which were supposed to have replaced Satan. A fewer Topol missiles will release funds that Moscow can pump into overhauling the ageing Satan and Scalpel missiles and prolonging their life till 2015.

AFGHANISTAN
Tell-All Tapes
CNN’S Nic Robertson has done in Afghanistan what the CIA and other American operatives were expected to—he has procured 60 videotapes documenting Al Qaeda activities and lengthy footage of Osama bin Laden. One of these tapes shows an agonising death of three dogs exposed to chemical agents. Other tapes have instructions on bomb-making and shooting surface-to-air weapons. Another documents Laden’s famous press conference of May 26, 1998, where he declared war on the US and Israel. He had said then: ""By God’s will, their (jehadi groups) actions are going to have a successful result in killing Americans and getting rid of them." On August 7, US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam were simultaneously attacked.