Robert O Blake, the new Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, making his debut before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday, said Secretary of State Hillary's Clinton's trip to India next month will be a tangible manifestation of the Obama Administration's commitment to take the Indo-US relationship to the next level.
Pakistan has moved one step closer to receiving massive American economic and military largesse -- reminiscent of the billions of dollars it received during the Reagan and George W Bush Administrations when military dictators Mohammad Zia-ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf respectively were in charge -- to the tune of $1.5 billion annually over five years, when the Senate-Lugar aid bill steamrolled through the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 16-0.
Just when, at what point, did India lose the game against England and with it, the berth in the semis?
President Barack Obama has nominated his friend and former room-mate and major campaign fund-raiser Vinai Thummalapally of Colorado Springs, Colorado, as the next US Ambassador to Belize, the only country in Central America where English is the official language.
Richard Holbrooke, the United States Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has asserted that the Obama administration "believes that what happens in Afghanistan and Pakistan is of vital interest to our national security and that India is a country that we must keep in the closest consultations with."
A nonproliferation hawk, who vehemently opposed the US-India civilian nuclear deal, former Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher will take over as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.
Bruce Riedel, senior National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration, who spearheaded President Obama's strategic review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, told rediff.com that for all the Pakistani leadership assurances that the ISI has severed its links with terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Taliban, the ISI's association with them is as entrenched as ever.
A major priority on the agenda of United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, William J Burns --- who will be the first senior US official to visit India after the Lok Sabha polls -- will be to begin discussions with senior Indian officials about operationalising the India-US civilian nuclear deal.US business and industry, which lobbied feverishly to push through the deal, have been urging the administration to move quickly on this front.
US Senators Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat and John Cornyn, Texas Republican have launched an attempt to revive the largely comatose US Senate India Caucus.
Tariq Fatemi, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and principal foreign policy adviser to erstwhile prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has urged New Delhi to lift the 'pause button' on the Indo-Pakistan composite dialogue, which was imposed after the Mumbai terror attacks.
India's new envoy to the United States, Meera Shankar, has said that the results of the recent elections in India "are a vote for continuity, stability and inclusive development." To sustained applause, Shankar also lauded the catalytic role played by the Indian American community in taking Indo-US relations in recent years to unprecedented levels."Of course, our relations with the US have undergone a very significant transformation," she said.
Former US envoy to India Frank Wisner and industry sources expressed elation over Obama's choice of Roemer while the likes of South Asia expert Stephen P Cohen was cautious in his opinion. Some community activists were disappointed that the President had not made a high-profile nomination from the career diplomat cadres or the world of politics or business as he had for the ambassadorial posts in London and Beijing.
The Indian American kid was declared the Spelling Bee champion after she correctly spelled 'laodicean' at the end of the grilling championship finals, which included 11 students from all across the country, seven of whom happened to be Indian-Americans.
If ever there was any doubt that during the past few years, Indian American kids have come to virtually own the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee competition, it was erased with a vengeance on Thursday morning when of the 11 championship finalists, seven or more than 60 percent were Indian Americans, belonging to a minority population that is less than one percent of the total US population.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who just couldn't stop praising Pakistani Army General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , told Congress Thursday that Kayani has purged the so-called 'rogue' elements from the ISI who are in cahoots with the Taliban.
The Al Qaeda network is not located in Afghanistan, but clearly headquartered in Pakistan, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen told Congress Thursday, and warned that if the Taliban takes over Afghanistan again, it would mean the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan to plan and plot attacks against the US reminiscent of 9/11.
Saying that the challenges the United States faces in Pakistan are far greater to that in Afghanistan, Senator John F Kerry, the chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, warned that if Pakistan, "a nuclear-armed nation of 170 million people" becomes a failed state, it would pose 'an unimaginable peril to itself, its neighbors and the world.'
The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved a legislation that would triple economic assistance to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year, authored by its chairman Congressman Howard Berman, California Democrat, despite being vehemently opposed by the pro-Pakistan lobby and the Obama Administration.
Several US lawmakers pledged to support the Sikh community's efforts to serve in the US armed forces without compromising their religious principles.
A bi-partisan group of some of the most influential US Senators has called on the Sri Lankan government to expeditiously alleviate the suffering of thousands of Tamil refugees and return them to their homes by the end of the year.
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