Keeping up his tradition of celebrating the festival with soldiers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sir Creek near the Indo-Pak border in Gujarat's Kutch district and offered sweets to jawans.
Hitting back at Gujarat Chief Minister for his comments on Sir Creek, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid today said Narendra Modi should not 'compromise on national interests' for electoral gains.
Rebutting Chief Minister Narendra Modi's claims on development in the state and Sir Creek issue, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said in Kalol on Friday that the Gujarat government is making false promises to electorates.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday accused the PMO and Congress party of "keeping the country in dark" over Sir Creek issue and slammed UPA for "lacking the guts" to take on "authoritative" Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik for his remarks.
Ahead of the Indo-Pak Home Secretary talks, Pakistan High Commissioner Shahid Malik on Friday hoped that dialogue between the two countries on all issues, including Siachen and Sir Creek, will make progress.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is hopeful that disputes related to Siachen and Sir Creek will be resolved very soon with India, creating an atmosphere for the two countries to achieve a breakthrough on the long-standing Kashmir issue."All the possible solutions on Kashmir will be discussed first in a parliamentary committee on Kashmir and then the final solution will be approved by parliament," he said.
Officials said the fishermen's reasons for being in Indian territorial waters are still to be discovered.
A Pakistani boat, which had intruded into Indian waters near Sir Creek area of Kutch, was seized by the Border Security Force on Friday, but its occupants managed to escape."During patrolling, a BSF team spotted a boat about 1.5 km from the Sir Creek area. On seeing the BSF patrol team, the occupants of the boat dived into the sea," BSF officials said. They said the team "seized the boat and started to track down the occupants."
The predictions are that Siachen and Sir Creek issues would be settled and some tangible progress on the issue of Kashmir is likely during Singh's trip.
We have to take a holistic view of our relations with Pakistan, Dr Singh said.
India is planning to deploy a hovercraft for keeping surveillance in 'Harami Nala'-- a 22 km long water channel accessible from Pakistan -- infamous for being prone to infiltration from the neighbouring nation.
Some abandoned boats have been recovered in the Sir Creek area, Lt Gen S K Saini, GOC-in-C of the Army's Southern Command, told reporters at an event near Pune.
Pakistan has arrested 17 Indian fishermen and confiscated their three boats for allegedly straying into the country's territorial waters.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari have underlined the need to move step-by-step and find pragmatic and mutually acceptable solutions to India-Pakistan bilateral issue, government told the Lok Sabha on Monday.
The era of wars has ended and Pakistan is prepared to resolve all outstanding issues with India, including the Kashmir dispute and terrorism, through talks, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Monday.
Describing terrorism as a "common menace," Pakistan Wednesday agreed to fight it jointly with India and gave a commitment for maintaining ceasefire on the Line of Control. After extensive talks between External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the two sides also reported progress on Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek issues and expressed willingness to push forward the confidence building measures.
Aimed at boosting the Coast Guard's (CG) surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities along India's western coast, a new CG Air Enclave will be made operational on Thursday at Porbandar in Gujarat.
India and Pakistan were close to sealing an agreement on Kashmir and other contentious issues between the two countries when President President Pervez Musharraf was in power. "...I had told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and he had agreed, of course. It was his turn to come to Pakistan and we had decided that if he comes and there is no signature on at least one out of those three, if not all the three, it would be a total flop and that must never happen," he said.
Pakistan has asked the US to nudge India to address contentious issues in order to bridge the trust deficit between the two countries instead of looking at the distrust solely through the prism of terrorism, a media report said on Wednesday. "We want the US to encourage India to take steps for improving the human rights situation in Kashmir, moving forward on Siachen and Sir Creek and agreeing to arbitration on the Kishanganga hydropower project."
Talking to media persons, Qureshi said that the peace process between India and Pakistan had not stalled but admitted that there had been 'hiccups'.
'There was this judicial crisis in Pakistan that began in March and then there were two-three elections in India, including the one in Uttar Pradesh, that took the attention of the governments away,' Kasuri told Karan Thapar on India Tonight programme on CNBC-TV18.
Lack of progress on these issues can cast a shadow on the ongoing dialogue process," he said.
The talks will be held in Islamabad, sources told PTI in Delhi on Monday after a meeting between External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri.
Pakistan has been routinely releasing Indian fishermen through the land border but retaining their boats, the only source of their livelihood.
Akhtar was trying to gather information pertaining to deployment of security forces along the western coast, Sir Creek and Kutch areas and also about military installations in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa
Pakistan has handed over to India a "new set of proposals" aimed at resuming the stalled bilateral dialogue and gradually addressing all longstanding issues, a media report said on Saturday.
"Dialogue is the only way forward in normalising situation between the two neighbourly countries," Sharif said on his arrival at the Heathrow airport in London on his return from the US after attending the UN General Assembly.
'At critical moments an inability to take tough decisions resulted in potentially far-reaching solutions slipping out of our grasp.' 'If similar opportunities come Narendra Modi's way will he act differently?' asks Karan Thapar.
An orange alert has been sounded for Srinagar, Avantipur, Jammu, Pathankot, Hindon airbases after the monitoring of the terrorists' movements by the intelligence agencies.
"Pakistan is now waiting for India's response to the proposed dates," Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's adviser on foreign affairs, said.
She is the first lady to be deployed on the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battlefield.
The action took place on the high seas at the peak of the Monsoon season in the first half of July when Pakistan Navy Ship Alamgir moved from its side to Indian waters across the maritime boundary line between the two countries, Government sources told ANI.
Pakistan's maritime security agency on Thursday arrested 58 Indian fishermen after they allegedly strayed into the country's territorial waters.
The Indian fishermen will be presented before a judicial magistrate on Thursday and then sent to jail. The latest arrests come at a time when tensions between the two countries are escalating over various issues.
At least 45 Indian fishermen have been arrested by Pakistani authorities near Karachi
Pakistan's former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf has said he believes in a tit-for-tat policy on all fronts and claimed that Kargil conflict was in response to India's role in the creation of Bangladesh.
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