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Cyprus on Saturday hailed the full lifting of a US arms embargo on the ethnically divided island nation as a milestone reaffirming increasingly tighter bilateral bonds that serve to bolster stability in the turbulent east Mediterranean region. The Cypriot Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Cyprus-US strategic partnership aims at creating the necessary conditions for regional security and stability. US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement that Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined Cyprus met the conditions to allow for exports, re-exports and transfers of defense articles .. .for the fiscal year 2023. The US will assess annually whether Cyprus complies with conditions for the embargo lift, including implementing anti-money laundering regulations and denying Russian military vessels access to ports for refuelling and servicing. Cyprus barred Russian warships from using its ports in early March following the invasion of Ukraine. The conditions
Pakistan on Friday said that India's unbridled acquisition of arms was creating an imbalance in the region, threatening peace and stability. Foreign Office spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmed said this at the weekly briefing in response to a question about Indian Air Force deploying its first batch of S-400 Russian Missile Defence System in Adampur and Halwara Air Base in Punjab, some 90-100 Km close to Pakistani border. It has been a long standing concern of Pakistan that the arms race, the imbalance that has been created and further exacerbated in our region because of India's belligerence and unbridled acquisition of arms over the years, threatens regional peace and stability, the FO spokesperson said. He said Pakistan had shared those concerns with friends, members of the international community, and had also raised these issues at the relevant forums in the United Nations. "Almost over 70 per cent of the military capability that India has acquired is actually directed, deployed .
Russia's share of arm imports to India fell from 69 per cent in 2012-17 to 46 per cent in 2017-21, according to a report released on Monday by Stockholm-based defence think-tank SIPRI. Russia started a war against Ukraine on February 24, which led the US and other western countries to impose extremely harsh economic sanctions on the country. "Between 201216 and 201721 Indian arms imports decreased by 21 per cent. Despite this, India was the world's largest importer of major arms in 201721 and accounted for 11 per cent of total global arms imports in the period," the report noted. Russia was the largest supplier of major arms to India in both 201216 and 201721, but India's imports of Russian arms dropped by 47 per cent between the two periods as several large programmes for Russian arms wound down, said the report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This, combined with India's increased efforts to diversify its arms supplier base, meant that Russia's sha