Missiles

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. missile strike has killed four alleged militants near the Afghan border.

LOS ANGELES -- On the surface, Yi Qing Chen appeared to be a straight-laced businessman exporting plastic junk from the U.S. to China.

Secretly, Chen was a smuggler willing to sneak into the U.S. whatever would fit into 40-foot shipping containers -- be it fake Marlboros, or ultimately, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles that could target F-15 or F-16 fighter jets, authorities say.

Chen, who was convicted last October of trafficking in counterfeit cigarettes, distributing drugs, and conspiring to import the missiles, was sentenced Monday to 25 years in federal prison.

The strikes took place in the Datta Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region -- the main sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters along the Afghan border, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The roughly three dozen suspected militants at the meeting were allied with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a powerful Pakistani Taliban commander in the area who has focused his efforts on fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan, said the officials. The insurgents were discussing plans to send new groups of fighters across the border, the intelligence officials added.

MOSCOW -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, his confident bluntness on full display, has declared Russia might build up its nuclear weapons instead of reducing them if the new START treaty arranged with the Obama administration is not ratified by Congress.

If the treaty is held up by U.S. legislators showing "a very dumb nature" then Russia will "have to react somehow," Putin said in an interview with CNN's Larry King scheduled for broadcast Wednesday.

MIR ALI, Pakistan -- Suspected U.S. missiles destroyed a moving vehicle near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan on Friday, killing four alleged militants inside it, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The attack by unmanned drones is the second in a week to hit North Waziristan as the U.S. intensifies its search-and-destroy missions in the strongholds of Taliban and al-Qaida-linked fighters who plot attacks on NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan.