The main elements of the programme are bilateral meetings with the US leadership, participation in the Quad Leaders' Summit, address at the UN General Assembly and business interactions.
The General Assembly hall, where world leaders come together every year for the high-level UN session, was packed with UN diplomats, officials, yoga gurus and practitioners, children and people from various backgrounds as India's Permanent Mission to the UN organised the commemoration of the 5th International Day of Yoga Thursday.
Pakistan on Wednesday once again raked up the Kashmir issue in the United Nations when its President Asif Ali Zardari sought a solution to the issue under an UN resolution. He said Kashmir remains a symbol of the failure of the UN system and Pakistan's principled position on territorial disputes remains the bedrock of its foreign policy.
Addressing world leaders at the 68th session of the UN General Assembly, Obama said if the international community cannot be united against forcing Syria to give up its chemical weapons, "then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws".
The White House has ruled out any bilateral talks between United States President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh next week in New York where they will attend the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly. "We don't have any bilateral meetings planned at this point," US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters while briefing them on Obama's agenda in New York.
India said on Thursday that it desired normal relations with all its neighbours, including Pakistan, and advised Islamabad to create a conducive atmosphere, including by taking "credible, verifiable and irreversible actions" to stop cross border terrorism against it and enable the two countries to engage and address issues bilaterally.
Only 13 nations voted in favour of Russia's call for a secret ballot on draft resolution on Ukraine.
Biden has reiterated America's support for India's permanent membership on a reformed UNSC and its entry into the NSG during his first in-person bilateral meeting with Modi at the White House.
Pak PM discussed the situation in Kashmir and tense relations with India with Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif.
The 193-member UN General Assembly adopted the draft resolution 'Humanitarian consequences of the aggression against Ukraine' by Ukraine and its western allies, with 140 nations voting in favour, five against and 38 abstentions. India abstained on the resolution.
.jpg)
India, along with the United States and Pakistan, has voted against a provision in a United nations resolution calling on to 'promptly' accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear-weapon nation 'without conditions' and to place all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
Ambassador Pankaj Sharma, Permanent Representative of India to the Conference on Disarmament (CD), Geneva, said India has been drawing the attention of the world towards these threats and the need to strengthen international cooperation to address them through its annual consensus UNGA resolution titled 'Measures to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction'.
External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Wednesday said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaj Sharif on September 29 in New York will obviously send 'some significant signals' to Islamabad about India's concerns on cross-border terrorism.
Shringla said India will continue to work towards the reformed United Nations during its stint as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Multilateral platforms are being misused to justify and protect perpetrators of terrorism, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said
In his address to the high-level UN General Assembly session, Jaishankar said those who politicise the UNSC 1267 Sanctions regime, sometimes even to the extent of defending proclaimed terrorists, do so at their own peril.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Joe Biden are expected to deliberate on ways to bolster bilateral ties in trade, investment and defence and security in their in-person talks in Washington, DC, on September 24, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Tuesday.
It was Obama's eighth and final address to the UN General Assembly as the US President
The 193-member general assembly voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to condemn Russia's "illegal so-called referendums in regions within the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine and the attempted illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, following the organisation of the above-mentioned referendums".
India, along with 12 other United Nations Security Council members, abstained on a resolution by Russia on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
According to some media reports, the Modi-Xi informal summit could take place from October 11-13.
Gambhir also took a dig at Qureshi's emphasis on a "new Pakistan" under Khan, saying while the Indian delegation had come to listen to Pakistan's "new" foreign minister outline the vision of a new Pakistan, "what we heard is a 'New Pakistan' cast in the mold of old."
Addressing the UNGA plenary session Clegg called for enlarging the Security Council 'to make up for the failure to fully face new challenges posed by a global map' that has radically changed since the world body was founded 65 years ago.
India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador K Nagaraj Naidu, on Monday wrote a letter to President of the 74th Session of the General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, expressing New Delhi's strong disappointment over the decision regarding roll-over of the intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) on UNSC reforms into the next session of the General Assembly that begins this month.
New Delhi's candidature was unanimously endorsed by the 55-member Asia-Pacific grouping, including China and Pakistan, in June last year.
India's external affairs minister takes a stroll in Manhattan.
In his departure statement ahead of his week-long visit, Modi referred to Indo-US relations and said working together, the two nations can contribute to building a more peaceful, stable, secure, sustainable and prosperous world.
The G-4 foreign ministers' grouping, that includes India, on Thursday called for urgent reform of the United Nations, including the Security Council, an issue that India has emphasised for the past several years.
The UN General Assembly on Monday adopted a negotiating text by consensus for the long-pending Security Council reforms, setting the stage for talks on the issue at its 70th session beginning on Tuesday, boosting India's bid for a permanent seat in the revamped world body.
In a significant departure from tradition, the United States has decided to host Prime Minister Narendra Modi by working out a "special gesture date" around the 69th Session of the United Nations General Assembly meeting that is scheduled to take place on September 26 in New York.
'Pakistan will leave no stone unturned to keep Kashmir on the edge and put the entire blame on the Government of India if there is any untoward incident,' says Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).
"Indian-Americans are an 'organic bridge' between the world's two largest democracies," he said.
People turned up in large numbers outside Palam airport to welcome the PM. The BJP also organised a cultural programme at the airport.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met Foreign Minister of Antigua and Barbuda E P Chet Greene on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly and raised the extradition issue of Choksi, who is currently in the Caribbean island.
The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have welcomed the announcement by the militaries of India and Pakistan to strictly observe all agreements on ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir and other sectors, and hoped that it would lead to greater peace and stability in South Asia.
India has said that serious bilateral dialogue can happen only "without the shadow of terrorism" as Pakistan raked up the Kashmir issue at the United Nations.
"This august forum witnessed a new low on its 75th anniversary. The leader of Pakistan today called for those who incite hate and violence to be outlawed. But as he went on, we were left wondering, was he referring to himself?" First Secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the UN Mijito Vinito said, making India's Right of Reply.
Ending days of speculation over their meeting, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on September 29 in New York at the hotel where Singh will stay during his United States visit.
Hosting a summit of leaders of Germany, Japan and Brazil under the G-4 format, the PM said the UNSC "must include the world's largest democracies, major locomotives of the global economy, and voices from all the major continents" to carry "greater credibility and legitimacy".
