Australia backs F-35 fighter jets in new defense strategy

By James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia committed to long-term plans to buy up to 100 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as part of its new defense strategy on Friday, easing concerns about the future of the controversial fighter from a major foreign buyer.

Canberra, a close U.S. ally, would also buy 12 Boeing Co EA-18G electronic attack planes, modified versions of the 24 Super Hornets already equipping Australia's air force, as a stopgap until the F-35 is delivered.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith announced the decisions as he released a new defense white paper, which is the first reassessment of Australia's military priorities since 2009, and since the U.S. pivot to the Asia-Pacific, which included U.S. marine rotations through northern Australia.

"This important decision will assure a first-class air combat capability for Australia through the transition period to the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35), which will proceed on its current schedule," Smith said.

Australia's first two F-35s are due in 2014-15.

Canberra's decision reinforces positive steps for the F-35, coming on the heels of a decision by Norway to buy six F-35s a year earlier than planned, and the Dutch parliament's decision not to reassess F-35 rivals to replace aging F-16s, despite cost overruns and development delays.

Australia decided to stick with the F-35, initially buying 14 F-35s, followed by three operational F-35 squadrons, of around 75 planes, with the first squadron in service from 2020.

The government also holds the option of buying a further 25 F-35s from 2030, to replace the Super Hornets when they are withdrawn from service, bringing the total of F-35s to 100.

The paper makes no commitment to build a fourth advanced air warfare destroyer, part-built by BAE Systems and Spain's Navantia, but opts to replace two ageing supply ships.

Smith also said the government would proceed with plans for 12 new conventional submarines but he ruled out buying the submarines off the shelf, opting instead for new designs to be built in Australia.

With Prime Minister Julia Gillard's minority Labor government under pressure to find Budget savings to respond to collapsing revenues, Australia's net defense budget has contracted to around 1.56 percent of GDP, or A$24.2 billion. As a percentage, spending is at the lowest level since 1938.

The new white paper makes no commitments on defense spending, but says the government remains committed to a target to increase defense funding to 2.0 percent of GDP, but when the economic circumstances allow.

(Additional reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Paul Tait and Michael Perry)

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French defense minister visits northern Mali

GAO, Mali (AP) — France's defense minister reaffirmed Friday that his country will keep 1,000 of its troops in Mali to fight radical Islamic militants even after the arrival later this year of more than 12,000 United Nations peacekeepers.

In a visit to the volatile northeastern city of Gao, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian addressed reporters a day after the U.N. Security Council authorized the deployment of the peacekeeping force.

"From now on we are in the post-war phase. The U.N. resolution adopted yesterday will allow for the arrival of a force to stabilize the country," he told reporters. "But France will keep about 1,000 soldiers to carry on with military operations."

Some Malians are already questioning how successful the United Nations peacekeeping mission to their country will be given its limited mandate and the volatile mix of armed groups across the north.

The U.N. force is tasked with helping to restore peace after a French-led military operation was launched in January to dislodge radical Islamic fighters who had seized control of the country's vast north.

However, the U.N. peacekeepers will not be authorized to launch offensive military operations or chase terrorists in the desert, which French forces will continue to do, although France is aiming to downscale its presence in its former colony by year-end.

Daouda Sangare, an entrepreneur in Bamako, questioned how much the peacekeepers would do to protect civilians because of their limited mandate. Other U.N. peacekeepers in Africa have been accused of failing to protect local populations from attack, he said.

"The U.N. forces will only be coming to collect their salaries," he said. "We have seen the example in Congo, where the M23 rebels entered Goma and the U.N.'s blue helmets were there in the city and did not protect the population. There were deaths and injuries."

On July 1 the U.N. peacekeepers are supposed to take over from a 6,000-member African-led mission now in Mali, although the deployment date is subject to change depending on security conditions.

The transformation into a U.N.-led mission will be a positive step because it will have considerable financial backing, said Ousmane Diarra, a Bamako-based politician.

"Until now, the African forces that have been in Mali have been financed by their countries," he said. "That was a worry for us because it was not clear that the African countries could continue to finance their military mission in Mali."

Mali fell into turmoil after a March 2012 coup created a security vacuum that allowed secular Tuareg rebels to take over the country's north as a new homeland. Months later, the rebels were kicked out by Islamic jihadists who carried out public executions, amputations and whippings.

When the Islamists started moving into government-controlled areas in the south, France launched a military offensive on Jan. 11 to oust them. The fighters, many linked to al-Qaida, fled the major towns in the north but many went into hiding in the desert and continue to carry out attacks including suicide bombings.

"We know it's going to be a fairly volatile environment and there will certainly be some attacks against peacekeepers where they will have to defend themselves," U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters on Thursday.

France is gradually reducing its presence in Mali — currently just under 4,000 troops — and French officials said they expect to have roughly 1,000 there by year-end. Some 750 of those will be devoted to fighting the insurgent groups, officials said.

The U.N. force will also operate alongside a European Union mission that is providing military training to the ill-equipped Malian army, which was left in disarray by the March 2012 coup.

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Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.

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Kenya vote commission cites Bush v Gore in defense

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A lawyer for Kenya's election commission cited the U.S. Supreme Court case Bush vs. Gore on Thursday during arguments before a Kenya Supreme Court that must now rule on the outcome of this East African country's presidential election.

Ahmednasir Abdullahi told Kenya's highest court Thursday it should adhere to judicial restraint and uphold the March 4 result from Kenya's election commission showing that Uhuru Kenyatta won with 50.07 percent of the March 4 vote.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the runner-up with 43 percent, and civil society groups are asking the court to order a new election because it wasn't free and fair. The court is expected to rule by Saturday.

Abdullahi quoted U.S. Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote after hearing the 2000 case that decided that U.S. presidential election, that the appearance of a split court on a highly politicized case risks undermining public confidence in the court.

Kenya's current Supreme Court was reformed after a disastrous 2007 presidential election that sparked weeks of tribal violence that killed more than 1,000 people. The court's formation and the newfound trust Kenyans have in it is frequently cited as one of the reasons Kenya's contentious election this year has not yet sparked any violence.

Abdullahi reminded the court that it is only two years old, and he told them: "You must show restraint."

But Justice Smokin Wanjala did not appear to appreciate Abdullahi's advice.

"It is not this court on trial," Wanjala told Abdullahi. "Argue your client's case."

The legal team for Odinga on Thursday argued that Kenyatta's election win should be invalidated because of anomalies in the registration of voters, in the transmission of vote totals and manipulations in the tallying of votes. Lead counsel George Oraro said the elections were not carried out under the rules and regulations prescribed by the law.

Oraro said the election commission increased Kenyatta's vote tally by as many as 11,000 votes in his strongholds and reduced Odinga's by more than 7,000, he said. Oraro also said more than 36,000 people were registered after the registration process was closed.

Kenyatta crossed the 50 percent barrier by only 8,400 votes out of more than 12 million cast. Had he not crossed the 50 percent mark he and Odinga would have faced one another in a runoff.

Lawyers representing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission defended the institution against accusations that it failed to carry out a free and fair election and suggestions that it conspired to give Kenyatta the victory.

IEBC lawyer Paul Nyamodi said the number of registered voters changed because of audits of the registrar. He said the electoral commission took it upon itself to register more than 36,000 people whose fingers prints could not be recorded by the earlier Biometric Voter Registration system.

"This was not a process conceived to skew the election in anyone's favor. It was a process conceived not to disenfranchise Kenyans who came out to register for the elections," he said.

Lawyer Nani Mungai said Odinga's petition was trying to "claw back" from Kenyatta 8,400 votes to force a re-run of the vote.

"There were challenges in technology and we accept them ... but does the fact that we were ambitious enough to try and use technology mean that we should be vilified?" he asked the court.

Fred Ngatia, Kenyatta's lawyer, dismissed Odinga's claims that people were illegally registered after the deadline saying the law requires that the registration of voters be continuous.

"There is nothing that can be said to be a legitimate complaint from a candidate who took part in the process," Ngatia said.

If the court upholds Kenyatta's victory, his next court case will be at The Hague, where he faces charges at the International Criminal Court for helping orchestrate the 2007-08 postelection violence. Kenyatta's deputy president, William Ruto, faces similar charges at the court.

On Wednesday an attorney for the African Center For Governance played a video for the Supreme Court that she said showed Kenyatta's vote totals increased between when some local polling stations publicly announced their counts and when those numbers reached the national tallying center. That group is trying to demonstrate not that Kenyatta didn't win but that constitutional and legal safeguards were so breached that the legitimacy of the election outcome is open to question.

Kenya had put high hopes that the electronic registration and identification of voters would eliminate allegations of rigging that sparked off protest in 2007 which degenerated into tribe versus tribe violence in which more than 1000 people died and 600,000 were evicted from their homes.

A 2008 government report examining the 2007 electoral process found that vote counts were changed by extensive perversion of polling, probably by ballot-stuffing, organized impersonation of absent voters, vote buying and/or bribery.

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Ex-US diplomat rankles Taiwan with defense remarks

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The former top American diplomat in Taiwan has said that the island's declining military budgets have left it vulnerable to Chinese attack and made it easier for mainland spies to penetrate its armed forces, remarks that the defense ministry called "not entirely objective."

The comments from William Stanton constituted an unusually hard-hitting critique of Taiwan's national security posture, and stood in sharp contrast to repeated assertions of American support for President Ma Ying-jeou's five-year program of seeking to lower tensions with the mainland, from which Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.

A career diplomat, Stanton was head of the de facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan from August 2009 to August 2012. His remarks came in a speech before a pro-independence organization in Taipei on Friday.

Responding to Stanton's charges, the defense ministry acknowledged Monday that between 2003 and 2008 unspecified "political reasons" led to cuts in the duration of military service "which impacted negatively on the quality of military exercises and on force preparedness." It did not elaborate.

It also said it regretted that defense spending was unable to exceed 3 percent of GDP, but said that despite budgetary difficulties it had made "appropriate" expenditures on transitioning to an all-volunteer force and "meeting other major defense needs."

Since 1994, Taiwan's defense expenditures have steadily declined. In 2012, they constituted 2.2 percent of GDP, far below the 3 percent target Ma fixed when he came into office in 2008.

One of Stanton's sharpest criticisms was reserved for a possible link between declining Taiwanese military morale and the upsurge in Chinese espionage penetrations of the Taiwanese armed forces. Citing press sources, Stanton said there had been at least nine of these penetrations between 2004 and 2011, and that many had targeted "Taiwan's command and control and communication systems and U.S. weapons systems sold to Taiwan."

"These cases have been harmful not only because of the potential loss of unknown quantities of classified information, but also because their success and frequency serves to undermine U.S. confidence in security cooperation with Taiwan," Stanton said.

His charge constitutes what is believed to be the first public acknowledgement from a U.S. government official — serving or recently retired — that Chinese espionage against Taiwanese targets may be impacting America's willingness to provide security assistance to Taipei.

Responding to Stanton's charge, the defense ministry said it had been zealous in pursuing cases of Chinese espionage against the Taiwanese military, and that this zealousness proved its "credibility" in combating the Chinese spying threat.

"We will continue working on measures to safeguard our security," it said.

Under Ma's leadership, tensions between China and Taiwan have receded to their lowest levels in more than 60 years, and the possibility of war between the sides has been significantly reduced.

Stanton acknowledged that in his remarks, but said it was still vital that Taiwan take its national security needs seriously, not least because China has never disavowed its threat to use force to bring the island under its control.

"I firmly believe that sufficient self-defense forms the foundation from which Taipei can most confidently manage relations with Beijing," he said.

Sheila Paskman, spokeswoman at the de facto U.S. representative office in Taipei, the American Institute on Taiwan, said that Stanton's "views are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of AIT or the Department of State."

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Kim Dotcom’s defense will not be allowed to view U.S. government’s evidence against him

Who says you can't fight City Hall? Certainly not 11-year-old David Williams. The young man reprimanded members of the Dallas City Council for not giving him their undivided attention during a meeting. In a video that went viral, David stands behind a podium, with a room full of strangers to his back. Well, actually, he [...]

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