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India Beefs Military Budget As Pakistan Protests
NEW DELHI, Feb 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - India revealed Wednesday a new national budget with a 13.8% increase in military expenditures prompting Pakistani protests that the move could further destabilize the volatile region.
India's decision came as Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha detailed plans for budgetary cuts and slashing government expenditures, making the defense hike the only increase in the budget.
India, locked with mainly Muslim archrival Pakistan in a decades-long dispute over Kashmir, says it wants to build a nuclear deterrent, purchase eight submarines, modernize its aircraft fleet and obtain sophisticated fighter jets.
Sinha said the defense allocation for the fiscal year beginning April 1st, would be increased by 75.4 billion rupees ($1.6 billion) to 620 billion rupees, over the revised figure for fiscal 2000-01 of 545 billion rupees.
This is the second hike after last year's gigantic 25% increase in military expenditure. The new defense budget is equivalent to 2.5% of India's gross domestic product.
Pakistan, however, said the hike would upset the military balance in South Asia.
In Islamabad, Pakistani foreign office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said India had launched itself on a "massive program of expansion of its conventional capability" without regard for regional stability.
"The massive acquisition of armaments by India is a cause for concern for Pakistan because the bulk of India's army is deployed on the Pakistani border," he said.
"Therefore we cannot but be deeply concerned," he added.
Pakistan and India, whose decades-old rivalry became nuclear in 1998 after tit-for-tat nuclear weapon tests, have fought three wars since 1947, and came to the brink of a fourth less than two years ago in the Kargil area of Kashmir.
Finance minister Sinha offered the largest piece of the fiscal cake of 311 billion rupees to India's 1.3-million-strong army, which has been asking for the latest hardware to step up vigilance on the border with Pakistan. India is likely to acquire the needed military munitions and armaments from Israel.
Israel, locked in a conflict with Muslim nations over its occupation of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, has expressed continuing concerns over Pakistan's 1998 nuclear test, calling it the "first Islamic bomb," that could possibly be used against Israel.
The Indian Air Force, the world's fourth largest, which has been campaigning for jet trainers since the mid-1980s, was allocated 77 billion rupees from the revised defense budget, while the navy's share was marked at 42 billion rupees.
Analysts say the air force received the highest increase in terms of percentage. "And so one can easily infer that there will be provisions for air force acquisitions," said an official from the United Services Institute, a military club of generals, admirals, and air marshals.
The air force is committed to the purchase of Russian Sukhoi war jets and spare parts for its existing fleet of ageing MiG aircraft.
"The increase is modest if inflation is to be taken into account," said Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Indian Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis think-tank, adding that, "We will have to see the long-term impact of this budget."
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