Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Kathmandu on Tuesday to attend his first SAARC Summit, being hosted by the Government of Nepal.
A five-member Pakistani Joint Investigation Team on Tuesday applied for visa to come to India to carry forward the probe into the Pathankot terror attack, a week after the announcement by Foreign Ministers of the two countries that it will come in New Delhi on March 27.
Raising the Kashmir issue at the SAARC meeting, Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Thursday alleged that the violence being committed in Kashmir is "open terrorism".
President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday night hosted a dinner for visiting South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation leaders and Prime Minister Narendra Modi where the guests were treated to a variety of dishes drawn from various parts of the country.
He underlined that Lok Sabha election results in India show that the Modi government kept alive and strengthened the 'expectation of change' in the country.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leaves New Delhi on Wednesday on a 4-day visit to Maldives to attend the SAARC Summit on the margins of which he will meet his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.
The visit comes seven months after India cancelled foreign secretary-level talks.
Sushma Swaraj urged the SAARC nations to focus on culture, commerce and connectivity.
Friday's incident at Herat has dampened somewhat the spirit behind the invitation. It reminds Modi much before he officially becomes prime minister, of the challenge that awaits his government, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
On a day when the sixth anniversary of Mumbai attack was being observed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday told South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation leaders that India feels the 'endless pain' of lost lives and urged the eight- nation grouping to combat terrorism unitedly.
Quoting diplomatic sources, The Express Tribune reported that India and Pakistan were exploring the possibility of a meeting between Swaraj and Aziz and also between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in the Nepalese tourist city of Pokhara.
Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on Wednesday hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to his country during the next SAARC meet would go beyond SAARC issues.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday said Pakistan "spoiled the talks" by talking to Hurriyat leaders just ahead of foreign secretaries of the two nations were scheduled to meet in Islamabad last month.
Shringla, a 1984 batch officer of the Indian Foreign Service, is considered an expert on India's neighbourhood and is currently serving as envoy to the US.
The formal talks have yet to resume," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said.
A total of over 75 Heads of State and Foreign Ministers will be meeting with Modi, external affairs minister S Jaishankar and minister of state for external affairs V Muraleedharan during the week across various platforms.
India would not be seen to be anything but rude with the Pakistanis. In the big picture, who is the bigger adversary right now? Who is the bigger pain in the neck? And who is it that is keeping more than 3,000 km of our borders active, throwing our military posture and deployments into imbalance? asks Shekhar Gupta.
Shringla last served as India's envoy to the US. He will be serving a two-year term. In the course of a diplomatic career spanning 35 years, Shringla has held a variety of positions in New Delhi and abroad, and is considered an expert on India's neighbourhood.
'Terrorism continues to be the overwhelming threat to security and stability in the SCO region and therefore Dr Jaishankar strongly pitched for 'collective action',' observes Dr Rajaram Panda.
The instructions followed monthly review of the progress of eight major infrastructure sectors -- Civil Aviation, Ports and Inland Waterways, Railways, Roads, Telecom, Power, Coal, and New and Renewable Energy.
The Pakistani foreign minister will also visit five other SAARC nations.
In the first-ever separate resolution on foreign policy brought in its National Executive in Bengaluru, BJP attacked the previous Congress-led Government, saying "a cursory glance at the 'lost decade' of the UPA, reveals retreat and a loss of direction in engaging with neighbours, ham-handed diplomacy vis--vis Pakistan and a blind-spot in our foreign policy to the Indian Ocean island states."
According to Bambawale, even while tensions were high between the two nations, there had been contacts at the operational level.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, currently in Maldives attending the SAARC summit, told rediff.com on Thursday that anything between India and Pakistan is spectacular, when asked whether the two countries could expect anything impressive from the meet.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will undertake a three-day visit to Bangladesh from June 25 during which she is likely to meet the top leadership of that country.
'The performance of any government is benchmarked on five parameters -- India's external security, the state of the economy, social cohesion, internal security, and India's relations with the world or its foreign policy. On each of the benchmarks in the past nine years, the NDA-BJP government has come up completely short'
Japan said it also understood India's need for using nuclear power to meet its energy deficit.
The leaders discussed other topical issues before the United Nations during the ongoing 69th Session of the General Assembly.
Pakistan agreed to a change in the format for future talks with India in return for New Delhi's consent to resume broad-based engagement with it, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
Modi, who will be addressing the General Debate for the first time in five years, has a packed bilateral and multilateral agenda beginning September 23 till September 27.
Veteran Pakistani diplomat and current Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani is expected to be appointed the country's ambassador to the US ahead of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Washington this month.
Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan is located across the river Ravi, about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjab's Gurdaspur district.
Security will be a consideration, as would protocol, but given Modi's penchant for the unconventional, it should not come as a surprise if he indeed decides to attend the ceremony in Kabul, says Ramesh Ramachandran.
"There is no use of these stop-start talks. We know the outcome, it's futile. The people of this country have been bored with such moves by the government," Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said.
Pak claimed that the Indian Prime Minister's 'internal politics' do not permit him to extend an invitation to his Pakistani counterpart.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances