On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the first time addressed the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Kathmandu in Nepal. Here are the top quotes from his speech:
A three-day meet on 'Science-based agricultural transformation towards alleviation of hunger and poverty in the SAARC countries' will discuss the regional agrarian situation, encompassing food insecurity and poverty and suggest necessary policy and programme shifts to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
The summit will be held in the picturesque city of Kandy, with Colombo planning 'foolproof' security arrangements to ward off any attack from the LTTE as it battles the rebel forces in the north.
They shared the dais but other than a formal handshake, there was no exchange of courtesies between prime ministers of India and Pakistan during the nearly three-hour South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit in Kathmandu on Wednesday.
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.
'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'
According to Bambawale, even while tensions were high between the two nations, there had been contacts at the operational level.
The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday said it has attached Indian assets of a Sri Lankan man and his son as part of a drugs-linked money laundering investigation against them.
'As long as businesses do not consider cyber recovery an integral part of their enterprise IT, they remain greatly vulnerable.'
Borrowers should be careful if the app promises too-quick disbursal, and doesn't provide adequate information on the terms of the loan, such as interest rate, repayment schedule, etc.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to announce a host of initiatives for the health sector on Independence Day with the highlights being the 'Heal in India' and 'Heal by India' projects and a roadmap to eliminate sickle cell disease by 2047, official sources said.
Islamabad will be sealed off completely from Tuesday with army helicopters making surveillance sorties and 4,000 policemen keeping vigil.
'By the end of 2022, we expect the installed base of 5G smartphones in India to reach 80-85 million.'
After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed his concern over the Indian embassy attack in Kabul, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Colombo and discussed the incident for which Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence has been blamed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday met Afghan President Hamid Karzai and is understood to have discussed with him the regional situation, particularly in the war-torn country.
The merits and demerits of the telcos' 5G strategy however is clearly dependent on the financial muscle of players, reports Surajeet Das Gupta.
Reviewing the progress achieved by South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, leaders of the grouping have advocated greater cooperation among the members.
"We see signs of hope. Governments of the region are addressing bilateral political issues. We should break with the past and join hands to overcome the challenges," Dr Singh said.
Although Afghanistan will be formally inducted as the eighth member of SAARC on Tuesday, Afghan Foreign Minister Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta also attended the meet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a $1 million ad-hoc grant for the operational budget for the BIMSTEC secretariat and another $3 million assistance to revive the grouping's centre for weather and climate.
Stringent action should also be taken against persons involved in terrorism and their extradition should be ensured, he said.
More than 2,000 activists of various religious and jihadi outfits in Pakistan on Wednesday protested against the visit of Home Minister Rajnath Singh, accusing him for the unrest in Kashmir.
According to top official sources, the foreign secretaries will meet only after the Special Investigation Team from Pakistan arrives in India and makes concrete progress in the probe.
An agreement between India and Pakistan, however tenuous, has its own meaning and impact. We have not heard the last word about the ceasefire agreement, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has decided to skip the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Foreign Ministerial meeting in Colombo on Friday and in his absence his deputy E Ahamed would represent India at the meet.
'Pakistan's negativism should be seen as the reason for India losing interest in SAARC.'
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Gan on Wednesday on a four-day visit to Maldives during which he will attend the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation Summit and have a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Pakistan has said disputes, which are holding back regional cooperation must be resolved and the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation should help create amity, understanding and cooperation on the basis of "enlightened self-interest of the peoples" of South Asia.
In a veiled attack on Pakistan, India on Saturday said that no country can escape its responsibility by blaming non-state actors for terrorist activities emanating from its soil.
Seeking to further democratise air travel with dependable and affordable services, airline Akasa Air is aiming to start flights in late May or early June after getting its first Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in April. Bullish on the long term growth potential of the country's civil aviation sector, ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed carrier is looking to have 18 planes in its fleet by the end of March 2023. Despite COVID clouds continuing to cast a shadow on the airlines, Akasa Air CEO Vinay Dube is more than optimistic as he asserted that "if you look at the long term future of commercial aviation in India, it is as exciting as anywhere in the world".
An Indian high commission diplomat was denied permission to travel to Lahore to set up the mission's stall at the ongoing South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Trade Fair where all the other SAARC nations have their representation.
President of the Kyrgyz Republic, who is the current Chair of the SCO, and the PM of Mauritius, who was the chief guest at this year's Pravasi Bhartiya Divas, have also been invited, the MEA said.
'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.'
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.
"It was a formal courtesy call, nothing else," an official said.
Leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries vowed to collectively combat the scourge of terrorism, extremism and insurgency plaguing the region with Pakistan and Bangladesh rejecting claims of those who justified violence in the name of Islam.
The arrest of Madhuri Gupta, a diplomat working in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, on charges of spying will have an impact on the mood of the ongoing South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Thimphu because the matter is related to India's national security. Gupta, 53, a promotee officer of the ministry of external affairs, was arrested in New Delhi four days ago. Prasad refused to elaborate further on the issue. Gupta used to work as a translator.
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