With Pakistan's possible suspension from the grouping expected to dominate the Commonwealth Heads of Government meet, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left Delhi on Thursday for Kampala where hot issues like climate change, human rights and terrorism will also be on the agenda.
The two leaders are understood to have discussed ways to expand bilateral ties. The 30-minute meeting took place on the sidelines of the ASEAN-India summit. Trade between the two countries has been growing at a rapid pace and the two nations have set an ambitious target of $10 billion to be achieved by 2010.
China was forthcoming and supportive of international civil nuclear energy cooperation with India as the two countries affirmed their readiness to take their strategic and cooperative partnership to a new level at the ASEAN summit in Singapore on Wednesday.
Terming India's ties with the ASEAN as a 'pillar' of its 'Look East' policy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday proposed a bilateral trade target of $50 billion by 2010 and sought boosting of cooperation with the key ten-member grouping in technology, health care, climate change and tourism.
The Netherlands, a key member of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, has said that the export of nuclear goods for peaceful purposes to India was in conformity with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The country has also expressed its readiness to consider any proposal in this regard. However, Netherlands said that it was awaiting the finalisation of the agreement between India and the IAEA and it will formulate its final position after careful analysis of the pact.
India will develop its own version of the Global Positioning System by launching seven satellites in 6 years. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, to be functional by 2012, will be used for surveillance, telecommunications, transport etc.
The ISRO will launch its ambitious and maiden mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-I, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on April 9, 2008. "We are looking for a launch on April 9," Mylswamy Annadurai, head of Chandrayaan-I said.
The X Prize Foundation and Google Inc have announced a robotic race to the moon. The rules of the game are that participants must land a rover on the lunar surface, run it for at least 500 metres and send video images and data back to earth.
Lauding India's track record on non-proliferation, Japan said it has been a "good boy" despite remaining outside Non Proliferation Treaty regime, but New Delhi should shoulder the responsibility to strengthen the NPT regime.
The leaders agreed to work together to promote more favourable conditions for investment, both domestic and foreign, to foster economic growth and sustainable development.
'We note the commitments India has made... We look forward to reinforcing our partnership with India,' said the document issued by the US, Russia, France, UK, Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan.
India has held that countries responsible for creating the problem of climate change should come out in a big way to solve this issue.
Palaeobotanists scouring the icy heights of Jammu and Kashmir came across a set of plant fossils near Tsokar in the Eastern Ladakh region a proof of the existence of a coastal environment in the region.
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee made it clear that the joint initiative was aimed at covering terrorism everywhere and no area can be kept out of its ambit as terrorists do not respect any territorial borders.
"We have to be constantly alert, otherwise there is danger lurking at the sea coasts," he told a press conference after the maiden Fleet Review of Coast Guard ships.
The organic nickel compounds created by Rajsapan Jain and his colleagues at the University of Victoria, Canada, display magnetic properties spontaneously at room temperature.
This will make Apsara off-limits to the IAEA, once the Indo-US N-deal kicks in.
Faced with high energy costs hitting economies of the region, leaders of Association of South East Asian Nations and their dialogue partners on Monday agreed to strengthen regional cooperation on energy security
Kalam asked the scientific community to have a clear vision for the progress of the country in the field of science.
Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal, Tamil Nadu Governor Surjeet Singh Barnala and State Ministers participated in the function.
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