China's Anti-satellite

China's anti-satellite test set to dominate Indo-US talks

NEW DELHI: China and its rapidly-growing military power, including its recent anti-satellite (Asat) weapon test, will loom large during the first defence joint working group meeting between India and US next week. Diplomatic sources say the US delegation, led by deputy under-secretary of defence for Asia and Pacific, Richard P Lawless, will brief India about China's Asat test and its "serious" implications during the meeting on Tuesday. Apart from holding talks with foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and defence secretary Shekhar Dutt, sources said the American delegation will also present the "preliminary findings" of its annual report to the US Congress about China's escalating military capabilities. Lawless, in fact, in a recent testimony, said the US remained quite apprehensive about China's actual intentions since it continued "to invest heavily in the modernisation of its military, particularly in strategic weapons and capabilities to support power projection and access denial operations". The Indian side at the defence JWG, set up as a result of the expansive 10-year Indo-US defence framework signed in June 2005, in turn, will give its assessment of the Chinese maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). "The JWG, in which the Indian side will be led by director-general (acquisitions) S Banerjee, will also review the progress of the Indo-US defence ties, including missile defence, Afghanistan and other security issues," said the sources. China, however, will figure prominently on the radar screen. Its Asat test on January 11, in which a missile was used to destroy a weather satellite in orbit, really rattled Washington since it shook the overpowering US military dominance of space. Though the US itself tested Asat weapons in the 1980s, it contends that China is developing a wide array of space weapons and will eventually move towards deploying nuclear weapons in space.