Update on migrant invasion of Europe - 31 August 2016

7:10 p.m.

   Greek authorities have rescued 31 migrants from a crippled vessel off the country's western coast, after receiving a distress call.

   The coast guard said the boat was found Wednesday off the island of Paxi, and the migrants were being transferred to the mainland port of Igoumenitsa.

   The migrants, whose nationalities were not immediately known, were believed to have been heading to Italy.

   Greece is a major entry point for refugees and other migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Nearly 60,000 remain trapped in the financially struggling country due to a series of Balkan border closures and slow implementation of an agreement to share refugees among European Union members.

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1:30 p.m.

   Switzerland's executive branch has announced plans to step up processing of asylum requests, amid a growing backlog of migrants trying to enter from Italy.

   The Federal Council set Oct. 1 for the first phase of reforms to Swiss laws aimed to expedite processing of asylum-seekers, after more than two-thirds of Swiss voters accepted the plan in a summer referendum.

   The council also said Wednesday it would boost monitoring of asylum-request rejections by Switzerland's powerful regions, and penalize them financially if they fail to follow the law.

Switzerland's southern region of Ticino has seen a surge of migrants in recent months from neighbouring Italy. Many others were sent back to Italy for trying to enter without proper papers or not making formal asylum requests.

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1:25 p.m.

   Pope Francis has asserted his concern for the plight of refugees by assuming direct responsibility for migrant issues in a new Vatican department that merges four Vatican offices into one handling peace, the environment and human trafficking matters.

   The Vatican issued the statutes Wednesday for the new Vatican dicastery, which puts the pontifical councils for migrants, peace and justice, health workers and charity under one roof. The reorganization is part of Francis' overall reform of the Vatican bureaucracy to make it more efficient and responsive to the needs of local dioceses.

   Francis named as the department's prefect Cardinal Peter Turkson, currently head of the Vatican's justice and peace office who was the front-man for Francis' landmark environment encyclical. But the Vatican said Francis would personally oversee migrant issues.

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1:20 p.m.

   Poland's interior minister says Poland has denied entry to a group of Chechens because the country is sealing its border to protect the nation and Europe against the threat of terrorism.

   Mariusz Blaszczak was commenting Wednesday on Poland's refusal this week to admit some 200 Chechens from Belarus, across the European Union's external border.

   Speaking on TVN24 Blaszczak said: "The point is to ensure security to Europe,"

   He says that as long as the conservative Law and Justice party was in power "we will not expose Poland to the threat of terrorism."

   He did not explain why he linked the Chechens to terrorism.

   Poland rejects the EU plan for the group's members to share responsibility for sheltering migrants fleeing conflict in Syria, the Middle East and Africa.

Chechen migrants stopped at Polish border

   WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland has denied entry to a group of Chechens because the country is sealing its border to protect the nation and Europe against the threat of terrorism, its interior minister said Wednesday.

   Mariusz Blaszczak was commenting on Poland's refusal this week to admit some 200 Chechen migrants who were trying to cross the European Union's external border from Brest, Belarus.

   On Monday night, a group of Chechens camped in Brest protesting the denial to enter Poland and demanded to speak to Polish authorities, according to Poland-based Belsat TV. A spokesman for Poland's local Border Guard, Dariusz Sienicki, told The Associated Press Wednesday that the group had returned to Belarus.

   Human rights groups say torture, abductions and extrajudicial executions have been widespread during the rule of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the Chechens say they aim to enter the EU through Poland to seek asylum. Most travel on to Germany or other western European countries.

   Speaking on Polish TVN24 Blaszczak said that as long as he is the interior minister and the conservative Law and Justice party is in power "we will not expose Poland to the threat of terrorism."

   "The point is to ensure security for Europe," he said.

   He did not explain why he linked the Chechens to terrorism.

   In the past, Chechen separatists have used guerrilla tactics in their campaign to end Russian rule on their land. Two Chechen brothers were identified as the bombers who attacked the Boston Marathon race in 2013, and the Turkish government has asserted that at least one Chechen was involved in the attack on Ataturk airport in which 44 people died.

   Poland was receptive to Chechens during Chechnya's war against Russian forces, which ended in 2009.

   Sienicki said that some 6,000 Russian citizens, mostly Chechens, have been admitted to Poland so far this year, a 150 percent increase from the same period last year. During the same time, some 30,000 people have been denied entry.

   Quoting security concerns after terrorist attacks in Western Europe, Poland rejects the EU plan for the group's members to share responsibility for sheltering hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing conflict in Syria, the Middle East and Africa. Warsaw urges tighter control of the EU's external borders and insists on better cooperation in offering humanitarian aid to refugees in camps close to their homelands.

   Blaszczak said Polish border guards have been deployed to help guard the EU's border in Bulgaria and more will soon be deployed to the borders in Hungary and Greece.

A Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force AH-1S helicopter fires
anti-tank missile during an annual training session near Mount
Fuji at Higashifuji training field in Gotemba, west of 
Tokyo, August 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's defense ministry on Wednesday asked for a hike in spending to record levels, as it juggles its responses to a growing ballistic missile threat from North Korea and China's assertive moves in the East China Sea.

If approved, the hike of 2.3 percent will take the defense budget to 5.17 trillion yen ($51.47 billion) in the year starting April 1, for a fifth consecutive increase as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bolsters Japan's military.

The nation's Self Defense Forces are pivoting away from guarding the north against a diminished Russian threat to reinforce an island chain stretching 1,400 km (870 miles) along the southern edge of the East China Sea.

That means opting for fewer tank divisions as they build a mobile amphibious force from scratch.

The costly rejig comes as Japan is also forced to spend more to guard against ballistic missiles being developed by North Korea capable of striking most areas.

PATRIOT UPGRADE

The single biggest expenditure is 99 billion yen ($970 million) to upgrade Japan's warhead-killing Patriot batteries, a last line of defense against missile strikes.

The improvements will double their range to around 30 km (19 miles) and sharpen targeting to hit arriving ballistic warheads.

They will take five years to complete, with the first four enhanced Patriots expected to be ready for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

In June, North Korea test-fired what appeared to be two mobile Musudan rockets, one of which climbed to 1,000 km (600 miles), or enough to fly more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles) down range.

On Aug. 24, Pyongyang also fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) toward Japan that traveled 500 km (311 miles).

Japan's biggest defense contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) <7011.T> will upgrade the PAC-3s under license from Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co, sources familiar with the plan told Reuters last month.

The budget request also includes funding to improve Aegis destroyers that are Japan's first line of defense against ballistic missiles.

Japan and the United States are developing a new warhead killer, the Standard Missile 3 (SM-3), to destroy targets in space, but no decision on a full rollout has yet been made.

SOUTHWEST SHIFT

Other proposed defense buys will reinforce the East China Sea, where Japan and China are locked in a territorial dispute over a group of islets 220 km (140 miles) northeast of Taiwan known as the Senkakus in Tokyo and the Diaoyus in Beijing.

Japanese air scrambles against Chinese aircraft are running at a record high, with Beijing's navy probing deeper and more frequently into the Western Pacific beyond Japan's island chain.

Chinese military activity in the region was "escalating," Japan's Self-Defence Forces chief Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano said in June.

Defence officials want 95 billion yen next year to buy six Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters, and a combined 92 billion for four Boeing Co and Bell Helicopter V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and six Boeing Chinook twin-rotor helicopters.

The SDF also wants 11 BAE Systems AAV7 amphibious assault craft, and two long-range Kawasaki Heavy Industries C-2 military cargo jets.

Other buys will include a Northrop Grumman unmanned Global Hawk surveillance drone and a new larger-class diesel-electric submarine designed by Mitsubishi Heavy and Kawasaki Heavy.

Russia’s increasing snap military drills worry NATO

Polish paratroopers take part in the NATO Anaconda 
military exercises near Torun, on June 7, 2016

     BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Russia is increasingly conducting unannounced military exercises, straining its relationship with NATO, the alliance's No. 2 official said Monday.

     Russia had staged large drills with no advance notification "with increasing frequency," NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow said. He said there had been about a dozen in the past two years.

     Vershbow, on a visit to Bucharest, said Russia's drills are allowed by a loophole in a security agreement signed with Western countries.

     He said NATO wants to "develop a more stringent regime to increase transparency and ...predictability and a way to better stabilize what is a very unsatisfactory relationship with Russia."

     Alliance members haven't staged snap drills since the end of the Cold War, he said.

     He said "if there is an interest in Moscow in stability and predictability, then these exercises are not the way to go."

     He said the goal of NATO should be "to upgrade to greater stability and predictability," and to strengthen "the existing regime for transparency."

     He called on Russia to reconsider its suspension of the Conventional Forces in Europe, which it withdrew from in 2007 amid worsening relations with the U.S. over the presence of Russian troops in Moldova and Georgia.

     "We've lost the additional predictability that comes with that agreement," Vershbow said.

     NATO members Poland and Romania are uneasy about Russia's military presence near their borders.

U.S. warning shots fired at Iranian vessel

U.S. Navy ship fires warning shots at Iranian vessel

     WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots toward an Iranian fast-attack craft that approached two U.S. ships, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday, in the most serious of a number of incidents in the Gulf area this week.

     "They did feel compelled ultimately to fire three warning shots and the reason for that is... they had taken steps already to try and de-escalate this situation," spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.

      Tensions have increased in the Gulf in recent days despite an improvement in relations between Iran and the United States.

     Years of mutual animosity eased when Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran in January after a deal to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions but serious differences still remain over Iran's ballistic missile program, Syria and Iraq.

     A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the USS Squall patrol craft fired three warning shots from a .50 caliber gun in the northern Gulf on Wednesday after warning flares did not work.

     The incident started with three Iranian vessels, but there was only one around by the time the warning shots were fired, the official said. He described the Iranian behavior as "unsafe, unprofessional, and not routine."

     At one point, the Iranian vessel came within 200 yards (193 meters) of a U.S. ship, the official said.

     Another interaction took place between an Iranian and U.S. ship on Wednesday, the defense official said but gave few more details.

     The Pentagon earlier this week accused Iranian vessels of harassing a U.S. warship near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

     On Thursday, Iran's defense minister said those Iranian vessels were just doing their job.

     “If an American ship enters Iran’s maritime region, it will definitely get a warning. We will monitor them and, if they violate our waters, we will confront them,” Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said in a statement reported by the Iranian Students’ News Agency.

     A State Department spokeswoman said it was not clear what the intentions of the Iranian ships were, but the behavior was unacceptable.

     "We believe that these type of actions are of concern, they unnecessarily escalate tensions," State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told a briefing.

Russian drills near Ukraine cause Global Tensions

Tanks, aircraft and other Russian military equipment will be part of readiness exercises through Aug. 31, as the result of an order by President Vladimir Putin and Moscow's top defense officials "for protection of national interests in case of security threat." The drills come amid ongoing tensions with Ukraine over the contested Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Photo courtesy of Russian Ministry of Defense

     MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Amid political tension between Russia and Ukraine, Moscow is making certain its armed forces are ready to fight, if necessary.

     Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his military to conduct practice drills on the country's western edge, near Ukraine and the embattled Crimean Peninsula, to test troops'      readiness. The drills were announced by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

     "In the course of the first 24 hours, the ability of troops to perform missions under conditions of full combat alert is to be checked," the ministry said in a statement on its website. "The next step is the deployment of formations and units at military ranges and training areas and their preparation for training task performance.

     "The full procedure of preparation of the Armed Forces for protection of national interests in case of security threat is to be carried out."

     The announcement comes after German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused Moscow of breaking international law in annexing Crimea and supporting separatist rebels there. She emphasized that NATO is prepared to defend member states. She and French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday they will discuss Crimea with Putin at an economic summit in China next month.

     The drills are intended to test the ability of Russia's forces in the south, central and Northern Fleet. Several Russian military aircraft conducted tests Thursday near the western flank.

Russian Defense Ministry officials meet to discuss planned military
exercises in various regions near its western border with Ukraine on
Thursday. The drills are intended to test readiness, Russia's defense
minister said, and will run through Aug. 31. Photo courtesy
Russian Ministry of Defense

     The troops were put on full combat alert at 7 a.m. local time Thursday and the exercises will run through Aug. 31, the ministry said.

    Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov informed military diplomats of the drills.

     "We have informed in good faith the OSCE member states as well as China and Iran of the started unannounced inspection through the official channel," he said.

     Some critics dismiss the drills as more saber-rattling by Putin in the face of escalating tensions over Crimea, which Moscow annexed two years ago.

     Since Russia's retaking of the Crimean Peninsula, both sides have kept a strong military presence along the borders while diplomatic relations have been tense. Earlier this month, Putin blamed Ukraine for the deaths of two Russian service members in the region.

     Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko placed his military on high alert last week, saying, "We don't rule out a full-scale Russian invasion."