'Indian diplomacy is once again being saddled with the heavy burden of a Pakistan-centric foreign policy. It is something grossly unfair at a crucial juncture in India's trajectory as an emerging power on the global stage,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Xi Jinping got a dose of Modi's medicine inside the tent where he was being hosted on the banks of the Sabarmati river.' 'Modi reportedly told him, looking deep into his eyes: "This was not expected of your country. Can you tell me when the troops are withdrawing?".'
'Pakistanis are very clever in manipulating us,' former Bush administration official tells US lawmakers.
'The attack on the Pathankot base constituted an act of war. Yet Modi's only public comment up until now on that attack has been to blame it on "enemies of humanity".' 'Modi came to power talking tough about Pakistan. But in office, he has pursued a Pakistan policy that has lost both direction and purpose,' argues Brahma Chellaney.
At least eight persons, including three Haqqani network commanders, were killed on Thursday in a rare United States drone strike outside Pakistan's tribal belt, just a day after a top official said the US had agreed to halt such attacks during negotiations with militants.
'We have been one of the most frequent countries to be on the Council. We have contributed so much to the maintenance of international peace and security,' India's Permanent Representative to the UN Asoke Mukerji tells Rediff.com's Suman Guha Mozumder.
Special Representatives of India and China will hold the 16th round of boundary talks in Beijing on Friday, the first such meeting under the new Chinese leadership, to make another bid to move forward on the resolution of the vexed dispute.
United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan James Dobbins, who was in New Delhi on Thursday said in an interaction with the press that improvement in Indo-Pak ties will automatically improve the situation in Afghanistan, even as he discussed the current state of play in US-Afghan relations and attempts to work towards reconciliation with top officials.
India must watch for signs after Peshawar that Pakistan is waking up to the dangers of Islamism, muses Ajai Shukla
Pipeline will carry 90 mmscmd gas for 30 years; India, Pak to get 38 mmscmd each, 14 mmscmd to go to Afghanistan
Khan's government will be the third consecutive democratic government in Pakistan since 2008.
'There has to be strikes on the ISI headquarters to raze it to the ground figuratively and otherwise,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
The agreement on pricing last month marks a significant step towards promoting energy security in the region, say Nisha Taneja & Samridhi Bimal.
It currently has between 140 and 150 nuclear weapons in its control and stockpiled around 200 to 300 kilogram of plutonium.
Here are some of the most stunning moments of the week that was.
'The military aim in a future conflict, if it can't be avoided, should be to cause maximum damage to the adversary's war waging capability and capture limited amount of territory as a bargaining counter,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'Another rejection of mediation between India and Pakistan will leave Mr Trump disappointed.' 'In that case, he is likely to point out the war-like situation on the border and press for direct talks which have been stalled on account of continuing terrorism from Pakistan,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
As far as India is concerned, the danger is the potential of the IS to create mischief rather than its actual capability as of now, says Rajiv Kumar
We bring you a presentation of some of the best photos from around the world in the month gone by
'If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,' Trump said.
India should not have a large bilateral military training program in Afghanistan in the future because that would predictably exacerbate tensions, says Director of research, Brookings Institution Michael O'Hanlon.
A proposed nuclear deal aims to stop Pakistan from building small tactical nuclear weapons that could fall into terrorist hands.
With Beijing having had a profound rethink on India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a massive swathe of the planet stretching from the Asia-Pacific to West Asia are dramatically shifting. That grating noise in the Central Asian steppes will be heard far and wide -- as far as North America, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Modi wants to be pragmatic -- acknowledge the problem of Pakistan and that full reconciliation is essentially a non-starter, but at the same time grab the low-hanging fruits (such as trade) to put things on a more even keel, to engender enough stability in the relationship to allow him to focus on other priorities.'
The US and its allies must evolve a more comprehensive long-term plan to defeat the new danger that the caliphate poses to the world order. And India too must do its bit for course correction, says strategic expert Gurmeet Kanwal.
Some members of the Obama administration have worried that Pakistan's heightened anxieties about India might lead Islamabad to take reckless measures, so they have wanted New Delhi to pursue more diplomatic engagement with Islamabad.
'As India progresses and takes an increasingly hardline approach to Pakistani hostility, the young and restless population of Pakistan, sooner than later, will demand 'Gazwa e Hind' (conquest of India),' warns Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'It is important to note that American officials were trying their best to use the Taliban for their oil games till December 1997 when Mullah Ghous was invited to America. State Department officials did not show any interest in capturing or killing Osama bin Laden even at that time.'
'Nawaz Sharif knows a coup in 2016-2017 will not only complete Pakistan's isolation, but even a whiff of instability will frighten the world into imagining another Islamic State-zone, and this in a fully nuclearised subcontinent,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Iraq is on the verge of collapsing and foreign military intervention is inevitable. But for those who follow the developments in Iraq and the Middle-East will understand the current situation is nothing but a culmination of US and western policies toward the region, says Dr Waiel Awwad
'Our biggest problem has been keeping this country together.' 'Nation building is never easy. It is a very difficult task.' 'Even 70 years is not too long a time.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will focus on extended neighbourhood, particularly the ASEAN and Central Asian regions, says Archis Mohan
Given our troubled relationship with Pakistan, we need to keep our security apparatus in a state of alert with state-of-the-art equipment. All bilateral issues with Pakistan -- political, military, economic -- will simply have to go on the back-burner till Pakistan decides it wants to live as a good neighbour, says Vikram Sood.
Stating that India is new bright spot of hope and opportunity for the world, the prime minister said India among other things is igniting the engines of its manufacturing sector and making its farms more productive and more resilient.
The winners of the 60th annual World Press Photo Contest have been announced. The winning shot was taken by Turkish Associated Press photographer called Burhan Ozbilici, with an image he has simply titled An Assassination in Turkey. Showing Mevlut Mert Altintas shouting after shooting Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, at an art gallery in Ankara, Turkey, on December 19 2016.
The question really is whether the US can be persuaded to embark on a path of calibrated and stronger sanctions on Pakistan.
'Modi has said he has been made the PM of India not to do small things but big things. What bigger thing can there be than to have peace with Pakistan and in the neighbourhood?'
'Is Trump going to play a mediating role? Can he play a mediating role? It's out of the question.' 'Kashmir is an Indian responsibility.'
"We should make it clear to Pakistan that any LeT attack upon our homeland, they will bear responsibility for that because of their close relationship between ISI and LeT," Congressman Peter King said during a Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
'The response to terror is not always reciprocal terror, nor is launching a conventional response the best response.' 'The best response is to make the sponsor pay a price he cannot afford,' says former RA&W chief Vikram Sood.
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