To read Raymond Vickery's hugely interesting book while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still on Indian soil reminds one of the great distance India and the US have travelled since the 1998 nuclear tests.
Delhi's new catch-phrase these days is, 'capacity-building in Africa'.
Delhi held out "veiled threats' to China over visa issue.
Even as New Delhi consolidates its global standing this year with a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council, Jyoti Malhotra feels it will be the countries in its immediate neighbourhood that will be top priority for India's foreign office.
India has planned to invite leaders from across the spectrum, including Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, foreign minister Sujata Koirala, former army chief Rookmangud Katawal, as well as Maoist military commander Barshaman Pun 'Ananta', to sit around the same conference table in New Delhi this week.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev over lunch at home on Tuesday, but before that a bagful of agreements were signed at Hyderabad House in the capital, as well as on the margins of the summit, signalling that the suspicion and mutual agreement, which has been a key feature of the recent past, now truly belonged there.
But even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to visit Tokyo for his annual summit from October 25-27 -- as part of a journey to Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur -- and hopes to sign a landmark civil nuclear pact with his counterpart, Naoto Kan, Japanese resentment against India's nuclear ambitions continues to simmer.
As key world capitals scrutinise the Nuclear Liability Bill, passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, for word on how the new legislation would affect potential civil nuclear agreements with India, a senior Union minister has said that private suppliers could still sign agreements with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India clearly stating that their responsibility ended with the handover of equipment and other material to the operator.
Even as political acrimony over the Nuclear Liability Bill rages in and outside Parliament, India's old-time friend Russia has clearly told the Indian establishment that it will not accept any liability for the supply of equipment and other material to help India build its nuclear power plants, either in the present or future.
As India scalps its third nuclear deal this month, the vindication and the victory cannot hide the fact that the all-powerful Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which met in Christchurch, New Zealand last week, failed to dissuade China from supplying two nuclear power reactors to Pakistan in pursuance of two that had earlier been supplied.
Japanese officials admitted on the condition of anonymity, the rising power of neighbouring China, the fact that New Delhi had entered into talks with South Korea to exploit India's growing energy market as well as the considerable pressure by US companies who are joined at the hip with Japanese enterprises combined to persuade the Japanese government to relent in favour of the nuclear deal.
As ever, this is the major factor holding Saarc back and neither of the two countries seems to have an initiative.
Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, governor of Riyadh and third in line to the throne, has over the last five days in Delhi, Agra and Mumbai reaffirmed the message that terrorism in the name of Islam is not Islamic and that the entire region must be united against jihad.
Diverse concerns on trade, investment among participants at Brasilia summits.
As external affairs minister S M Krishna travels to Beijing on Tuesday for talks till April 8 with his counterpart, Yang Jiechi, highly placed sources in the establishment confirmed that India and China have been in talks for some time to ban Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Abdul Rehman Makki of the Jamaat-ud Dawa and Azam Cheema of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, under the UNSC resolutions.
However, it is not clear whether the Moscow bombings have been carried out by anti-Russian Chechen rebels or by Chechen separatists linked to the Al Qaeda who receive their training in the borderlands of Afghanistan-Pakistan. Indian intelligence officials believe these groups are increasingly linked, pointing out that the suicide attacks could also be in retaliation against the Russian decision to allow US and NATO forces to send non-lethal equipment through Russia to Afghani
India and Russia may have discussed far-reaching nuclear and defence cooperation behind the closed doors of Hyderabad House during Vladimir Putin's visit on March 12. But according to sources in both the establishments, the Russian offer, still being kept under wraps in India, was almost not signed during Putin's visit.
elhi must expand and intensify its dialogue with countries like Russia, Germany and Japan -- all of whom have enormous stores of experience, financial resources as well as determination -- to enhance both goodwill and leverage, so that it is ready to play an active role to fill in the vacuum when the US-NATO-led troops' draw-down begins.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin comes here on Thursday for a visit lasting less than 24 hours, during which period Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to request access to nuclear reprocessing technology, which the US remains hesitant about transferring to India.
Opening up borders between India and countries like Bangladesh can make the North-East region the fulcrum of India's 'Look East' policy.
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