'While overall this is a face saving deal just before the BRICS meeting in Xiamen, any forward military movement at Doklam once again could bring the two Asian giants at loggerheads,' says China expert Srikanth Kondapalli.
Top Indian and Chinese officials on Tuesday finalised President Xi Jinping's maiden visit to India, including the programme and key issues to be discussed, amid indications that he may begin his tour in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat on September 16.
With Donald Trump unable to make it, Modi settles for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Apart from emphasising the importance of India's economic development, and its re-integration into the global economy, Dr Singh has repeatedly emphasised the importance of the ideas that define the Indian civilization and the Indian Republic for global peace, security and challenges, ranging from terrorism to pandemics.
Leaving for Russia on his first foreign visit after assuming office for a second term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday India is ready to play its part in coordinating global efforts to overcome the economic slowdown. Singh, who will be attending the Brazil-Russia-India-China and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summits, said the BRIC grouping has the potential to lead global economic growth.
China, however, remained ambiguous about the status of its own troops.
The Chinese and the Indian troops were engaged in a standoff for 73 days in Doklam.
Sources also asserted that there was a "status quo" at the Dokalam for past six weeks.
As Xi is due to arrive in Goa on Saturday to take part in the BRICS Summit, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said the relations between India and China made "great headway" despite some "disputes" but there was no change in in Beijing's stand on the issues of NSG and Azhar.
The Foreign Ministry also posted a 15-page fact sheet with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16.
Modi said India and Russia have been friends for a long time and thanked Putin for inviting him for the first-ever informal meeting at Sochi.
India has told China not to "shift goalposts" and "confuse" managing the border affairs and restoring peace at the frontiers with the larger issue of the resolution of the boundary question, which is dealt with by different designated mechanisms.
'If an 'informal meeting' with Xi Jinping materialises before the SCO summit in June, that itself could be regarded as a significant breakthrough in India-China relations,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'One lesson to emerge out of the Modi-Putin summit is that India can be more self-confident that it possesses inherent strengths to leverage its interlocutors to influence Pakistani policies,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The government on Wednesday said there was no threat to Air Force One, the aircraft that flew Prime Minister Narendra Modi back from Germany over the airspace where Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down on Thursday.
India and Brazil on Wednesday called for urgent progress in reforms of the UN Security Council, as they agreed to scale up bilateral ties and deepen cooperation in international fora.
The perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack, who shot dead 166 people, had confessed to details that should have been enough to hang him, but Pakistan enjoyed his anti-India rhetoric and let him spread his tentacles. A revealing excerpt from Khaled Ahmed's Pakistan's Terror Conundrum.
China's intended role for AIIB is not so different from the existing Western lenders like the World Bank.
The meeting, which comes after the Doklam standoff, is aimed at a working a new paradigm for the bilateral relations for the next 15 years.
'It is astonishing that such a serious issue be handled in so casual and cavalier a fashion, but this has become what is expected of this government,' observes Aakar Patel.
As the pandemic unfolded, the India-China relationship has come under severe stress. To restore normalcy, agreements between the two countries must be respected scrupulously in their entirety. Where the Line of Actual Control is concerned, any attempt to unilaterally change the status quo is unacceptable, declares External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
"We have tweeted that the two leaders discussed a range of issues. A range of issues means a range of issues. I don't want to add anything further... I leave it to you to draw your conclusion," external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said.
'There is gradual rise in the number of nations viewing Pakistan as the nursery of global terror.'
Xi and Modi met soon after their arrival at a summit of the BRICS group of emerging powers. Xi said the two countries should join hands in setting global rules and suggested he attend the November meeting of the 21-nation APEC in Beijing, as well as take part in Chinese-led regional initiatives.
Amid imminent phasing out of the fiscal stimulus by US Federal Reserve, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday called for an "orderly exit" from unconventional monetary policies being pursued by the developed world for the last few years to avoid damaging growth prospects of the developing world.
Setting up Chinese Industrial Parks in India, increased access to Indian products to bridge the ballooning trade deficit besides border issues was expected to figure in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.
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.
China on Thursday said its stand on blocking India against UN action on Pakistan was based on "facts" and in the spirit of "objectiveness and fairness".
But Modi and Xi will attend a BRICS leaders meeting in Hamburg.
'Washington senses that the anchor sheet of India's strategic autonomy lies in its longstanding partnership with Russia, which remains firm and immutable despite the changes in world politics in the post-Cold War era,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.<
Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month will be undertaking one of the longest ever abroad visits by an Indian head of government in recent times. He is scheduled to be on a nine-day, three-nation visit to Myanmar, Australia and Fiji from November 11 to 19. Later in the month, he will be in Nepal to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit on November 26-27.
The S-400 Triumf long-range air defence missile system has the capability to destroy incoming hostile aircraft, missiles and even drones at ranges of up to 400 km.
Countries with abundant resources are faring worse in terms of development than those with less.
'This novel format of diplomacy -- the informal summit -- will not only facilitate bilateral communication and reduce miscalculations at the very top level of the two governments, but possibly open the space for China and India to speak in one voice on various issues of mutual concern,' note Feng Renjie and Ding Kun Lei
'New Delhi showed itself willing -- at least for a period -- to tolerate the risk of conflict and to withstand Beijing's implicit and explicit threats.' 'But it also continued to try to cut some kind of deal with China to reduce tensions.'
India is likely to send a high-level delegation, headed by the minister, given the conference's importance.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who is in Davos to showcase India as an investment destination at the World Economic Forum (WEF), on Wednesday promised India has a "lot in the pipeline" for global investors even as he plans to take up with Switzerland the issue of black money stashed in banks there.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has "strongly" and "clearly" conveyed concerns to Chinese President Xi Jinping over Beijing blocking a proposal for action by the United Nations against Pakistan on the release of jailed Mumbai attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, with India rejecting the "weak evidence" theory propounded by Beijing in this regard.
'The book has immense value because it reveals the inner workings of the think-tank which appears to provide facts and insights to Modi, though he himself takes the final decisions and articulates them in his characteristic rhetorical style,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.