The prime minister was received at the airport by India's Ambassador to the US, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, and his American counterpart Ken Juster.
'The picture only looks worse from where Bajwa sits.' 'He sees a domineering India to the east, an unravelling Afghanistan and a complex Iran to the west, an overbearing China on the north and a US which is no longer an ally,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
The Modi government has been put on notice.'Will it buckle under such pressure? These are times when the moral fibre of the leadership makes all the difference, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Trump is encouraging a cooling of tension between India and Pakistan, the White House said on Friday.
"We want to work closely (with) Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well," he said.
Trump's move came on Thursday a day after the House Speaker urged him to reschedule his annual State of the Union address slated for January 29, citing security concerns triggered by the shutdown that has entered its 27th day.
'The Indian side has realised that not talking to Pakistan has not served any useful purpose.'
Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Thursday called for transparent ties with US based on mutual trust as he met American commander in Afghanistan, days after the two sides struck a deal ending a seven-month blockade of NATO supply routes.
India is centrally important for America's success in the Af-Pak region, according to Richard Holbrooke, special United States representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan. "I want to be sure that everyone here recognises how centrally important India will be to this (the US success in Afghanistan and Pakistan)," he told American lawmakers at a Congressional hearing on Afghanistan and Pakistan convened by the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Making his way into Afghanistan unannounced, United States President Barack Obama signed a landmark strategic partnership agreement strengthening post-war ties with Kabul after 2014 when American combat forces return home.
Trump Administration has "already wisely restricted assistance to Pakistan, but there is much more to be done
Ahead of crucial talks with his Indian counterpart, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Saturday said he was ousted from power in a military coup in 1999 because he started peace talks with India.
'The greatest threat faced by India does not come from Pakistan, it comes from terrorism... It is easier to secure the borders of the US; it is not so easy to make India's borders secure,' Pulizer Prize-winning journalist Mark Mazzetti tells Rediff.com's Sanchari Bhattacharya.
"Indeed, nearly all of the jihadi groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, LeT, and others have joined together in an extended terrorist network that shares the same goals, including destabilising Afghanistan and destroying the Pakistani state," said Congressman Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The reduction of tension on the Chinese border may have reduced the urgency of a Biden-Modi meeting, but the sooner Modi starts a bromance with Biden the better as he had done with Obama and Trump, suggests Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari sought "greater transparency" in relations with the United States and called for an end to American drone strikes, saying they fuelled militancy in his country.
In a statement issued on Monday, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom said that it was deeply troubled over the passage of the bill in Lok Sabha.
India's most powerful prime minister in five decades gets publicly admonished -- if gently -- by the US vice-president. The question is, would this make him reflect on how and why, or which ones of his government and party's missteps exposed his flank like this? asks Shekhar Gupta.
United States President Barack Obama is at loggerheads with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, refusing to meet him apparently over blockage of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation supply lines into Afghanistan, an issue which continues to strain ties between two nations, American media reports said on Monday.
Led by Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, the United States has apologised to the people of Afghanistan on the "inappropriate treatment" of the holy Quran by American soldiers at the Bagram Airbase in a central Afghan province.
To get back into reckoning and ensure India's interests are given their due in Afghanistan, we need to evaluate a new mix of soft and hard options, writes Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Lauding India's contribution to the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, an influential American senator has said a strong India-United States partnership is an important factor for the peace and prosperity of the war-torn country.
The US intelligence community assesses that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar is now dead, although the circumstances of his death is not yet clear, the White House has said.
We understand the electoral compulsions, the desperate need for the BJP to have at least 50 per cent of the Hindus vote for them in Uttar Pradesh in a few months. For that, you need polarisation, put your own Muslim compatriots on the 'other' side. This is how your domestic politics runs contrary to your national, strategic interest, warns Shekhar Gupta.
The report said death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and that a cell comprising a 'Punjabi volunteer' of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi carried out Bhutto's assassination.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday rejected American accusations linking Pakistan's spy agency Inter Services Intelligence with the Haqqani terror network, saying the allegations reflected "policy disarray" within the United States administration on achieving peace in Afghanistan.
Slamming the United States for lack of cooperation in the probe into the massacre of 16 villagers in a house-to-house rampage by an American army sniper, an enraged Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Friday said he is at the "the end of the rope".
An American soldier who massacred 16 people, including women and children, in a house-to-house shooting rampage in Afghanistan could face death penalty if convicted, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said.
The deadly American air strike on a hospital in northern Afghan city of Kunduz that killed 22 people, including women and children, was a mistake, a top US commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday said as he conceded that they were taken by surprise by the recent Taliban upsurge.
Disappointed over Pakistan's slow pace of trial in Mumbai terror attack case, a top American lawmaker has demanded that the seven suspects, including Lashkar-e-tayiba operational commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, be handed over to the International Criminal Court to bring them to justice.
Snooping is one of the oldest peccadilloes of man, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
US President Barack Obama and his Defence Secretary Leon Panetta have praised special forces for conducting a successful rescue operation in Afghanistan that left one American soldier and seven terrorists dead.
The US favours a significant role for India in ensuring peace in Afghanistan but said it has to decide whether it wants a military presence in the war-ravaged country, a top American military commander said on Friday.
Jim Mattis in his resignation letter to the US president wrote that he deserved a defence secretary whose views were better aligned with his on these and other subjects.
'I am greedy to have my eggs in different baskets.'
India cannot continue with its ultra cautious stand on Afghanistan for much longer given the faster than expected reduction of the military footprint by the Western powers, says Harsh V Pant.
The army chief said that India needs to broaden its understanding of national security and must examine non-traditional threats like pandemics "de-novo" as they have the potential to inflict severe damage on the country. "We need to act and prepare ourselves accordingly."
Both Indians were employed as security guards with American company DynCorp, official sources told PTI.
Annet Mahendru -- the half-Indian making waves in The Americans -- on her love for Bollywood, daal-chawal and being a Russian spy.
Barack Obama has said that he had ruled out involving Pakistan in the raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout because it was an "open secret" that certain elements inside Pakistan's military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda, sometimes using them as strategic assets against Afghanistan and India.
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