"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.
Strengthening of police cooperation will be high on agenda of the upcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Home Ministers' conference during which India is expected to press for visible collaboration by member countries in the fight against terrorism.
Why omit the Tiananmen massacre from the history of China's Communist party, asks Claude Arpi.
US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke has promised "accountability" and "transparency" in America's civilian aid to Pakistan, a fortnight after a top Senator had expressed serious concern that the funds might end up in bank accounts of corrupt politicians and officials of the country.
Ansari, a 33-year-old Mumbai resident, was lodged in the Peshawar Central Jail after being sentenced by the military court on December 15, 2015.
Pakistan said it would approach the upcoming foreign secretary-level talks with India with an "open mind" in the interest of normalising bilateral relations though "the vibes emanating from the other side have not been encouraging".
The massive US civilian aid flowing into Pakistan would be squandered or stolen, a powerful American Senator has said, arguing that rampant corruption in that country would make effective aid distribution a challenge.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has confirmed that his government has begun informal talks with Taliban "for quite sometime" and hoped that the formation of a peace council will spur these efforts. "We have been talking to the Taliban as countrymen to countrymen," Karzai said in an interview to CNN, days after the American media had reported that secret high-level talks were underway.
Frank Ruggiero, a career civil servant who served under late United States diplomat Richard Holbrooke, has been made the acting US special representative to the Af-Pak region and will be assisted by two deputies, one of them an Indian-American named Vikram Singh.
US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke has said that the aid being given to Pakistan in the aftermath of the flash floods is inadequate.
Special US Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke on Tuesday said that the Obama administration would soon announce a range of actions for Pakistan in the field of water, energy and security.
The motion takes note of the UNHCR statement last month, which described the CAA as 'fundamentally discriminatory in nature', and also of other United Nations as well as the EU guidelines on human rights as it calls on the Indian government to 'repeal the discriminatory amendments'.
"Selling military hardware to Pakistan -- with a generous subsidy from American taxpayers -- is no way to convince them to become responsible players in the international community and assist in the fight against terrorism," Rand Paul said.
'We have been one of the most frequent countries to be on the Council. We have contributed so much to the maintenance of international peace and security,' India's Permanent Representative to the UN Asoke Mukerji tells Rediff.com's Suman Guha Mozumder.
Wider scrutiny of the mushrooming Twenty20 and T10 leagues around the world will be the key issue on the discussion table when the International Cricket Council (ICC) begins a series of meetings, from Tuesday.
The 24-year-old, born in Barbados and who represented West Indies at Under-19 level, was not in England's provisional squad and only made his ODI debut little over a fortnight ago.
The United States' mounting pressure on Pakistan -- to go after the Afghan Taliban inside Balochistan -- could affect the cohesion of the Pakistan army and lead to the destabilisation of the government, according to US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke.Earlier, Holbrooke said, "We will not be able to succeed in Afghanistan unless our Pakistan policy is equally successful".
Senior United States administration sources have dismissed speculation raised in some media reports that Richard Holbrooke, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had cancelled his visit to India this time around because he avoided getting caught up in the controversy over the opposition attacks on the India-Pakistan joint statement announced in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt
With the Afghanistan government in Kabul approaching Islamabad for help in opening "reconciliation" talks with the Taliban, a Pakistani role in shaping the political landscape in Afghanistan is now an uncomfortable likelihood for New Delhi.
India has been maintaining that China has no locus standi in commenting on Jammu and Kashmir.
The meeting was facilitated by Pakistan's spy agency -- the ISI
India captain and batting mainstay Virat Kohli was named skipper of the International Cricket Council's Test and ODI teams of the year, following a remarkable run in 2018.
Ahead of the key strategic dialogue with Pakistan, the Obama administration on Wednesday shot down Islamabad's plea to help it resume peace talks with India and mediate on key disputes with New Delhi on issues including Kashmir.
The three most powerful elements of Pakistani politics, President Asif Ali Zardari, opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and the Army are "coming together" to fight the "common enemy" of terrorism, the top United States envoy to the Pak-Afghan region has said.
Amid concerns by certain quarters in Pakistan over the 'strings' attached to the United States aid, Washington on Friday asserted that no condition has been imposed on Pakistan for the $ 680 Defense Authorisation Bill and charged that an attempt is on to 'willfully distort' the facts.
P B Chandra reports from Kabul on the Afghan presidential election, that has entered a run-off stage for the first time. The battle now is between the two frontrunners Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, with Abdullah holding the edge.
Influential American Senators have said they would oppose Obama administration's proposal to triple civilian aid to Pakistan and substantially increase assistance to its army without clear cut benchmarks and accountability provisions in it.
'Washington's silence about India's Article 370 move tells us all we need to know: It doesn't want to rock the boat of a relationship that has navigated some choppy waters but remains a highly important one.'
External Affairs Minister SM Krishna has categorically denied that he ever suggested that the Afghanistan government should opt for a political settlement with the Taliban to end the ongoing violence in the country.Earlier, the Indian Mission in New York also issued a denial on the subject. "There is no change in India's policy towards Afghanistan. The minister has been misquoted in his interview with the Wall Street Journal."
The Taliban has denied as 'baseless rumours' reports that its top leaders had met United Nation's representatives to discuss bringing peace to Afghanistan and vowed to persist in its war 'against the invaders'. The denial came in response to news reports that Kai Eide, the outgoing UN envoy, held a meeting in Dubai in February with members of the Taliban leadership. The United Nations has not confirmed that such a meeting took place.
Sri Lanka need to win their final two games, and hope for favourable outcomes in England and Pakistan's next fixtures.
Having major stakes in peace and development of Afghanistan, India is expected to press the world not to think about exit from there at a multilateral conference on the war-ravaged nation to be held in London on Thursday.
Suspicious of deepening ties between India and the United States, Pakistan is reluctant to plunge into war with Afghan militants and even high-profile visits of US officials have failed to win over a military and civilian establishment in Islamabad, a media report said.
The appointment of veteran diplomat Peter Burleigh as charge d'affaires at the American embassy in New Delhi was a Department decision and not on the recommendation of Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as had been rumored because of their earlier longtime working relationship, senior Administration sources have told rediff.com.
Karzai has steadfastly opposed direct talks between the US and the Taliban, wanting Afghan ownership of the "reconciliation process", as the reintegration of the Taliban into the mainstream is referred to.
The Pakistan government is reported to have raised the issue of its agrarian lands drying up due to India's water conspiracy with visiting United States Special Representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke.
'The majoritarian solution is what the BJP always prefers.' 'But this solution suffers from a major weakness: It ignores subjective preferences which can be important and non-negotiable,' points out T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
The Chinese envoy said that the India-China bilateral ties can't take the strain of another Doklam episode
Sushma in her address at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Council of Foreign Ministers meeting said that terrorism is an enemy of basic human rights.
'With the Citizenship Amendment Bill, Hindus from Pakistan can come to India. They have got a way,' says Gurumukh Jagwani who came to India on his honeymoon, loved the country so much that he stayed back and got Indian citizenship.
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