Amendments moved by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left to the President's address against the National Counterterrorism Center was defeated in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
After the second US-India strategic dialogue, Aziz Haniffa finds growing concern about the civilian nuclear deal trapped in limbo.
Seeking to end the logjam on National Counterterrorism Center, the home ministry has convened a meeting of top police and civil officers of all states on March 9 to allay apprehensions of the counter-terror body usurping their powers.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said she would take part in the chief minister's meeting on National Counterterrorism Center on May 5.
The recent attack on the Delhi high court exposes lacunae in India;s counterterrorism efforts, says Dr Sahibzada Amer Latif, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the newly established Wadhwani Chair for United States-India policy studies.
Henry Kissinger once said, 'It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.' India will have to wait and see, observes Rajeev Srinivasan.
Locked down in his Abbottabad hideout which he never left in six years, Osama bin Laden followed 'absolutely phenomenal operations security', and was taken by surprise when attacked by the United States forces, a top American counter-terrorism official has said.
These devices, at this early stage of the investigation, appear capable of igniting an initially small fire when opened, the Metropolitan Police said.
Afghanistan will remain a frontline state for Washington for a foreseeable future in terms of the potential threats to US national security from terrorist groups, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's dealings in Afghanistan in 1994.
Pakistan's border region remains the most dangerous place in the world and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas remains the epicentre of the world's worst of global jihad, a top Pentagon official has said.
'The attack killed 166 innocents, including six Americans. We will never let terrorists win, or even come close to winning!' he said.
"My view is that there is a real cancer within Pakistan, from the standpoint of militant organisations," John Brennan, Assistant to the US President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said in his speech at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
America's top counter-terrorism official Michael Leiter will quit next month, adding to the turmoil at the top levels of United States President Barack Obama's national security team.
"We got him," United States President Barack Obama said as soon as it became clear that the special forces were able to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's Abbottabad.
"The Indian government's counterterrorism efforts remained hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems," said the US Department of State's annual Country Reports on Terrorism.
Taking part in an interaction following his speech to a conference of US-India Relations, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robert Blake announced that US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will make her first trip to New Delhi in the spring for meetings with her counterpart Home Minister P Chidambaram and other senior officials in the Ministry and intelligence agencies.
The Barack Obama administration's Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State Daniel Benjamin, in an interaction with rediff.com on Wednesday, has admitted that the social services the Lashkar-e-Tayiba delivers through its front organisations like Jamat-ud-Dawah make the terror outfit even more insidious and dangerous.
The report prepared to coincide with the US president's visit to India by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, authored by its senior associate Ashley J Tellis, noted, "As Obama knows, there is nothing that India can meaningfully do to assuage Pakistani paranoia beyond what it has done already, namely offer to sustain the peace process and maintain its restraint in the use of force despite the continuing terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan."
India and the United States Tuesday signed six memoranda of understanding, including one on advancing global security and US-India Counterterrorism Cooperation Initiative.
The United States troops were prepared to capture Osama bin Laden alive, but his resistance and use of a woman as shield forced them to kill the Al Qaeda leader, the White House said.
'The worst case scenario for Pakistan is a full-scale Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.' 'Pakistani militants would be inspired and emboldened and seek to replicate the Taliban's successes in Pakistan.'
US President Barack Obama would hold his sixth Situation Room meeting with his national security team on Monday to discuss his administrations strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Barack Obama has said that he had ruled out involving Pakistan in the raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout because it was an "open secret" that certain elements inside Pakistan's military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda, sometimes using them as strategic assets against Afghanistan and India.
Ahead of Indo-US Strategic Dialogue, an Obama Administration official termed India as a "great and emerging global power" and said the talks, next week, will take the relationship between the two nations to a new level.
Ahead of Indo-US Strategic Dialogue, an Obama Administration official on Thursday termed India as a "great and emerging global power" and said the talks, next week, will take the relationship between the two nations to a new level.
The United States is offering rewards of up to $5 million each for information leading to the location of top two TTP leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali Ur Rehman.
'From the Indian perspective, Trump's invitation to Imran Khan to visit the White House is a bitter pill to swallow,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Of all of the branches and networks of ISIS, ISIS-K is certainly one of those of most concern.'
Pompeo, who became the Trump administration's highest ranking official to visit Sri Lanka, said that the US and Sri Lanka shared a vision for democracy to build a relationship and the "freedom to hold democratic elections".
The US Department of State's annual Country Reports on Terrorism for 2008, released on Thursday has said that India ranked among the world's most terrorism-afflicted countries, but said India's counterterrorism efforts remained hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems.
Officers from the rank of Deputy Inspector General (DIG) up to the top-most rank of Director General (DG) in these four forces retired after attaining the age of 60.
"The United States and China share a mutual interest in achieving regional stability and peace, and that a failure to designate Azhar would run counter to this goal," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Robert Palladino said in response to a question on previous successful attempts by China to block the UN designation of Azhar
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon on Wednesday met with the officials of the United States administration to discuss the issues related to the terror attacks in Mumbai that had claimed around 200 lives, including foreigners.Menon called on the Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns during his two-day visit to Washington.Menon's visit was planned ahead of the terror attacks in India's financial capital.
The United States has announced to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500 each by January 15 next year, which drew sharp reaction from influential lawmakers across the aisle.
Obama's detractors describe the new approach to counter-terrorism as the Jesuit approach. Will it succeed? Obama and Brennan want to give the new policy a try, writes security expert B Raman
Surprisingly though, there was no word on China in their public statements, including at the press conference, on Tuesday.
Yudh Abhyas-09, as the exercise is called, is the first time that the US has taken its potent Stryker infantry armoured vehicles outside of its operational area to a foreign land.
"Make no mistake: whatever LeT chooses to call itself, it remains a violent terrorist group. The US supports all efforts to ensure that LeT does not have a political voice until it gives up violence as a tool of influence," said Nathan A Sales, Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State.
Implying that Mumbai could be considered as a turning point in such terrorist tactics, Leiter said: 'We have seen, since the attacks in Mumbai, a desire and willingness to change some of these tactics, and we are concerned about the change of these tactics, both in the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Indian region, but also beyond that, and the potential for that to manifest itself in the United States or elsewhere.'
"Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is an extension of Al Qaeda core coming out of Pakistan. And, in my view, it is one of the most lethal and one of the most concerning of it," John Brennan, assistant to the US President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, told media persons at a White House briefing.
