Climate change is the official agenda for the 16th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit beginning on Wednesday, but the real focus will be on 'temperature' in Indo-Pak relations, which have always overshadowed such meetings.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is very much aligned with the foreign policy priorities of the Modi 2.0 government, says Sana Hashmi.
This is apparently keeping in view the developments in Nepal where King Gyanendra has assumed all executive powers after dismissing the Sher Bahadur Dueba-led coalition government.
India on Wednesday said some of the arrangements discussed in advance for providing protection to the top leaders did not get implemented.
Pakistan has got the message that the Modi regime in New Delhi has brought in a new language of dialogue with Islamabad, sources well informed about the preparation for the Kathmandu meeting tell Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
From January 2015, he has served as India's Ambassador to Poland, based in Warsaw, with concurrent accreditation to Lithuania.
It is time the political leaderships in this country arrived at a common ground over issues of foreign and security policy concerns. There has to be a greater communication between the government and the Opposition leaderships for the nation to present a unified face against the rest of the world, advises N Sathiya Moorthy.
The frosty Indo-Pak ties briefly gave way to some warmth when a smiling Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on Thursday shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, but India cautioned against reading too much into such "courtesies".
He did not mention the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.
India said it firmly believes that a peaceful and secure neighbourhood will yield "rich dividends" for SAARC nations.
'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'
New Delhi has reached out to neighbours like seldom before while singling Islamabad for criticism at international forums.
Musharraf's statement comes in the wake of the postponing of the SAARC summit which scheduled for November in Islamabad.
On the eve of the 15th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to be held in Colombo August 2-3, the US has said it does not believe SAARC is ineffectual and irrelevant and a farce as some in the West and in the region itself contend--who dismiss it as nothing but a group photo-op every few years--and is confident it can grow to be as powerful and influential as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
On the sidelines of the SCO visit in Ufa, the two heads met and decided to revive dialogue and find ways to expedite the trial of the Mumbai attacks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday paid homage to the victims of horrific 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks on its sixth anniversary and saluted the security personnel while reaffirming India's commitment to combat the menace of terror and "uproot it from the face of humankind".
The fishermen had been held at the Malir and Landhi district jail in Karachi for allegedly violating territorial waters in the Arabian Sea.
Narendra Modi has sent across a very strong message to the states that they may have their concerns but not the last word on foreign policy, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing C D Sahay, tells Vicky Nanjappa.
This is the first time Chinese official media referred to Modi's remarks about PoK and Balochistan.
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.
"ISRO has been launching at least one satellite every month, so our calender is perennially packed and at this point of time it looks difficult to launch the South Asian satellite in December. It could get delayed by a month," a senior official said.
Khan proposed a meeting between Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York this month.
MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said at a media briefing that the meeting, however, does not indicate any change in India's policy towards Pakistan.
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.
The Pakistani team investigating the Pathankot terror attack will complete its probe this week, a top official said on Monday, days after three suspects in the high-profile case were remanded to police custody.
'One cannot escape the conclusion that Pakistan has won the Paris-Bangkok-Islamabad round. To be able to resume the composite dialogue without making any progress on the Mumbai attack trials is a dream come true for Pakistan.'
'If there is a background of some kind of mutual understanding on how the dialogue process might develop in a mutually satisfactory manner...' 'If this understanding impacts positively on the ground situation...' 'As of now this is a heroic assumption. But it does not have to remain such.'
Pakistan on Thursday asked the world community to play its role in the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, saying it wants to resolve it in a peaceful manner and through result-oriented and sustained dialogue.
Modi said Nepal must identify its needs and priorities to deliver results.
A day after a handshake with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Friday that talks with India should not be at the cost of his country's 'dignity, self-respect and reputation'.
'India needs to be cautious that its differences with Pakistan do not obstruct SCO's functioning,' says Sana Hashmi.
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.
Chef par excellence Satish Arora recalls his days working as a chef to prime ministers to Chandrima Pal.
US refrained to make any comment on India's decision to not to attend the SAARC Summit in Islamabad.
Pakistan on Friday released 40 Indian prisoners, including fishermen, from a jail in karachi, officials said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Ufa on Friday after more than a year.
FM said every major terrorist incident in the world has a 'Pakistani footprint' around it.
Striking a conciliatory note amid rising tension in ties, Pakistan today said it does not want to live in "perpetual hostility" with India, noting time has come for the two neighbours to decide whether status quo should continue or a new beginning be made.
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