A first look of the Foreign Secretary's meeting with Rice.
Menon retired as Foreign Secretary in August, ending a career marked him out as one of India's best bureaucrats to hold the post. The fact that he superseded 12 seniors to be appointed to the post in 2006 when his equally capable predecessor Shyam Saran retired has more than paid off.
He replaces Shyam Saran, who has been designated as India's special envoy for the Indo-US nuclear deal.
But India's outgoing foreign secretary should not be judged solely on what happened at Sharm El Sheikh.
Menon has somehow come to symbolise the 'Sharm-el-Sheikh' line of India's neighbourhood policy -- unlike his hard-line predecessor who instinctively trusts crisis management to problem-solving. A 'greening' of the national security establishment is overdue and it will be in sync with the spirit of our times.
Those who know Shiv Shankar Menon will vouch that he did lots of things, substantial in the immediate neighbourhood and widespread in South Asia, but without making things public. Twenty per cent of Menon's job was visible, while 80 per cemt of his job was not known to the public, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon arrived in the United States on two-day visit to the US with a series of scheduled meetings including with officials at the State Department, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns.
Menon will present his credentials to President Pervez Musharraf after he returns from his three-nation tour. Musharraf is scheduled to reach Islamabad on Saturday from Rabat.
Menon's visit follows serious concern expressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over renewed violence in the island's embattled regions.
National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon has reached Kabul to review the security of Indians working on several development projects across Afghanistan.
Menon was in Colombo to discuss the ethnic strife with the President.
Menon currently is India's ambassador to China.
Menon said the current global economic crisis figured prominently during his meetings with officials of the Obama administration and congressional leaders in his trip to Washington.
National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, both former ambassadors to Beijing, prevailed over the dominant view of the Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorjee, being a "pro-China asset in India", reports RS Chauhan
India and China have transformed their once "adversarial relationship" to that of a "full spectrum" one and there was no reason to doubt the neighbours' ability to solve differences in the future, National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon said on Friday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran and India need to help spread justice in the world as the duo share humane perspectives on international affairs. Ahmadinejad spoke in a meeting with India's National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon on Monday in Tehran.
Indian Foreign Secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon will arrive in Washington on Sunday and will be holding meetings with top Obama Administration officials on a wide range of bilateral and regional issues. Taking the Indo-US relationship to the next level - from what was accomplished during the Bush Administration - is going to be the main focus of this first high-level Indo-US interaction after Barack Obama was sworn in as the USPresident on January 20.
Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon on Wednesday briefed Congress Members of Parliament about various aspects of the Indo-Pak joint statement issued at Sharm-el Sheikh, hours ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention on the issue in Parliament. Menon briefed a group of party MPs from both the Houses on the technical details of the statement so that they were aware of all the details of the communique before the discussion on the issue, sources said.
India on Friday described as "constructive and useful" the two-day meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in the run-up to securing a clean exemption for conducting international nuclear commerce.
On the eve of the Nuclear Suppliers Group's extraordinary plenary meeting to decide on nuclear commerce with India, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon will brief the current chair Germany and two other key members of the 45-nation NSG.
The situation in Sri Lanka, where thousands of Tamil civilians are trapped in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's strongholds, permeated the 45-minute discussion on Monday between United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon. This was the first high-level interaction between India and the Obama administration in Washington.
India's concerns over China's plans to build two nuclear reactors for Pakistan and bilateral issues are set to figure prominently during talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy Shiv Shankar Menon and the Chinese leadership in Beijing from Saturday.
Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said in New Delhi that, "Both India and Russia are keen to expand nuclear cooperation. All the preparatory work has been done." He was inaugurating an international conference on "Changing Patterns of Indo-Russian Cooperation" organised by the Observer Research Foundation. He said that India and Russia already have an "excellent relationship" and India considers relations with Russia very important.
India on Friday said it was confident of the passage of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal as it enjoyed bipartisan support among lawmakers, assuring that American firms would not be put at a disadvantage even if there is delay in getting a Congressional nod for the accord.
Accusing "elements" in Pakistan for the suicide attack on Indian mission in Kabul, India Monday made it clear that the recent spate of terror attacks and ceasefire violations triggered from across the border have put the peace process "under stress". In some tough-talking, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon told his Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir that these concerns of New Delhi must be addressed.
According to a source in government, "We have three pieces of evidence right now of the involvement of people based in Pakistan. One is the satellite phone through which calls were made to Pakistan from Mumbai. Two, the interrogation statement of the captured terrorist has lots of details which will help demolish Pakistan's claims that there are no terrorist camps inside Pakistan. Three, the dead bodies of nine terrorists and the proof of identity found on them."
Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, who wrapped up three days of intensive discussions with the hierarchy of the new Obama administration at the State Department, White House, and Pentagon, and also met with the leadership in the US Congress, apparently has every reason to be satisfied that the transformed US-India relationship is ready to be launched to the next level of the partnership.
On the eve of the first high-level talks between India and the new Obama Administration in Washington, with the arrival of Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, who will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior US officials later today (Monday), outgoing Ambassador Ronen Sen has dismissed concerns over the momentum of the relationship under the new dispensation in DC.
"You can see it when you talk to people. There has been a series of steps that will take the process forward," the Indian ambassador to Pakistan said in an interview to NDTV 24/7 news channel.
'If Washington has to balance Chinese power, she will have to turn to the third biggest power in the world which is India.' 'The United States and India will have to work together in order to keep Chinese ambitions in check.'
Pal succeeds Shiv Shankar Menon, who has become India's new foreign secretary.
National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon on Tuesday briefed senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley on the ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops along the Line of Control.
India and the United States have "not signed" the End User Monitoring Agreement, said Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon on Tuesday
Foreign Policy, a global magazine on politics and economic, has chalked out a list of top thinkers of 2010. Nine Indians or those of Indian-origin make the cut. Here's a list.
Speaking at the Gulf Forum 2011, in Riyadh, National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon said that if the centre of gravity of world politics has shifted to Asia, it is now also the cockpit of rivalries and the stage on which international competition is played out.
After the half-an-hour meeting Monday evening, Menon said that they discussed the reform proposals in UN but did not elaborate.
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