'The BJP would not have brought him into the party if they did not appreciate him.'
US Congressman Ed Royce, a ranking Republican on the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee, has warned the Obama administration against undoing all the Bush administration's hard work in developing closer ties with India, by coveting China at the expense of New Delhi.
United States Congressman Joseph Pitts, a seven-term Republican representing Pennsylvania, has declared that there can be no military solution to the Kashmir imbroglio, and called on President Barack Obama to keep his campaign pledge to help resolve this dispute between India and Pakistan.
US Congressman Gary Ackerman, New York Democrat, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South Asia, Thursday launched a blistering attack on the Pakistani military, accusing it of continuing to tolerate and pander to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, the terrorist outfit that carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
Thiruvaiyuru, where composer-saint Tyagaraja lived, is an annual pilgrimage for Carnatic musicians, eminent and unknown, young and old.
Appearing before the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tim J Roemer, a former Congressman from Indiana, told US lawmakers in response to a question that Kashmir is a 'sensitive and delicate' issue.
The Pakistan government has imposed restrictions on the disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan though he has been released from the house arrest, a top United States intelligence official has said.
The US said it has strong evidence that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile systems and electronic jammers to contested features in the Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea.
Congressman Gary Ackerman, who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, also warned that US military and economic aid could influence government policies but cannot change ground realities.
Senior Congress leaders accused the BJP of trying to bring down the party-led government, which is surviving on support of over half a dozen independent, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs.
United States lawmakers, who attended the annual Sikh American Heritage Dinner on Capitol Hill organized by the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, pledged to support the community's efforts to serve in the armed forces without compromising their religious principles.
Congressman Gary Ackerman, New York Democrat, and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who last week slammed the Congressional passage of the massive economic and military largesse to Pakistan to the tune of $1.5 billion annually over five years, as the House dutifully fell in line with the Kerry-Lugar bill passed by the Senate last week tripling the aid to Islamabad, has denounced the Pakistani military's hostility to this aid because it contains some cond
Given the sharp differences that the Democratic and Republican lawmakers and the White House has on various aspects of immigration reform including H-1B, the Congressional passage of the bill and its becoming a law as of now appears to be a tall order.
Veteran Congressman Pranab Mukherjee on Monday took over as the Finance Minister and held meetings with top ministry officials to deliberate on various issues faced by the slackening economy as well as the forthcoming Budget.
Jyoti Basu, the 95-year-old communist, has lost touch with many of his comrades. But this morning the former chief minister of West Bengal did not forget to call his favourite Congressman to say, "Happy Birthday!"
United States Congressman James Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, who hosted the 10th International Kashmir Peace Conference on Capitol Hill, believes the Kashmir problem between India and Pakistan also involves the issue of water. In his opening remarks, Moran lamented, "While the United States has been fighting a war in Afghanistan that we read about everyday, there has been another conflict -- one that is older and arguably more complex."
Shivakumar will be produced before a court in New Delhi on Wednesday by the ED for seeking his custody.
The three Mi-35 Indian multi-role helicopters donated to Afghanistan have made a big difference in the offensive against militants in the war-torn country, the outgoing commander of US forces in Afghanistan has said.
Many issues dog the Mahagathbandhan of the Congress, Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the most prominent of which is seat sharing.
Congressman Mike Honda of California, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, believes the ability of the Indian-American community to mobilize is an increasingly potent indication of its clout, and that it can translate into an effective weapon in the coming presidential elections.
A US lawmaker has praised the contribution of the Indian American community in the US state of Arizona, in particular the 'India Plaza' in the city of Tempe.
Former US envoy to India Frank Wisner and industry sources expressed elation over Obama's choice of Roemer while the likes of South Asia expert Stephen P Cohen was cautious in his opinion. Some community activists were disappointed that the President had not made a high-profile nomination from the career diplomat cadres or the world of politics or business as he had for the ambassadorial posts in London and Beijing.
The announcement in this regard was made by the White House late Wednesday night along with a dozen diplomatic posts, including nomination of Patricia A Butenis as the new US Ambassador to Sri Lanka.
The CIA found that 15 Saudi agents flew on government planes to Istanbul and carried out the killing at the Saudi consulate, the report said, adding that it could complicate President Donald Trump's efforts to preserve US ties with one of the closest American allies in the region.
Members of the United States Congress break bread to celebrate the contributions of Sikh Americans. Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa reports
Though the Indian caucus in the Obama administration is concerned over the recent reports concerning Pakistan's funds being used against India, it may be unable to bring any changes in the Kerry-Lugar bill that has assured Pakistan of USD 1.5 billion on an annual basis for five years.
"India is one of our most important allies and creating an exchange program between members of the US Congress and Representatives of India's Parliament will only deepen our ties and lead to greater understanding between our countries," McDermott said.
'The high profit margins in this kind of crime make it little wonder why gangsters and terrorists have turned to piracy.'
The country's new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, today said he prefers a Congressman as his successor in the finance ministry, setting off speculation about the implication of his statement.
"This man was on a mission, on a mission that he believed was from his God, a jihadist mission," Congressman Michael McCaul from Texas said in the House of Representatives. Citing the information he received from soldiers who survived the November 5, massacre.
If the Third Front -- currently comprising nine parties opposed to both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party -- manages to get more seats than the Congress, the Communist Party of India - Marxist led Left Front will work towards ensuring that the next prime minister is made from this bloc.But if the Congress' own tally turns out to be larger than the cumulative strength of the alternative-seekers, the Left will support a Congressman for the top slot.
Leading American experts on South Asia and former senior administration officials have strongly advised United States Congressman Gary Ackerman against lobbying on behalf of the India-US civilian nuclear agreement when he visits New Delhi next week, warning him that such efforts would only make a bad situation even worse. Incidentally, Ackerman has friendly relations with some of the senior Leftist allies of the Manmohan Singh government and members of the BJP.
Alleging that Khan is a "loose nuke scientist with proven ability to sell the worst weapons to the worst people", Congressman Jane Harman said on Thursday on the House floor that his legislation in this regard provides a path for the Zardari government to do the right thing.
Undeterred by the strong protest lodged by Beijing on a Tibet resolution introduced in the United States Congress, the American lawmakers have said that China is not serious in resolving the Tibet dispute.
Senior US lawmaker, Congressman Gary Ackerman, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South Asia, has said that the first step that both Washington and New Delhi has to take in the wake of the horrific Mumbai terror attacks, should be to increase US-India counter-terrorism in tangible ways that encompassed the whole gamut of intelligence sharing to joint special forces training to take on the terrorists and completely destroy them wherever they may be.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Narayan Rane's suspension from Congress has been revoked with immediate effect, All India Congress Committee General Secretary Janardhan Dwivedi revealed on Monday.Rane had been suspended for lashing out at the Congress' top brass, including party chief Sonia Gandhi, after he lost the Maharashtra chief minister's post to Ashok Chavan.
The United States House of Representative on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution recognising the influence Mahatma Gandhi had on Martin Luther King Jr, the great civil rights leader of America, who has been a source of inspiration to President Barack Obama. Passed by a roll call vote of 406 to 0, with 26 abstaining, the resolution commemorates the 50th anniversary of King's visit to India in 1959. It was introduced by Congressman John Lewis.
The nonproliferation lobby is not happy at all with Congressman Howard Berman's bill, which he introduced in the House of Representatives on September 25. Nonproliferation activists feel that their strongest advocate, who had been critical of the India-United States civilian nuclear agreement, has let them down by capitulating to the Bush administration with a piece of legislation, which is a clone of the measure that was approved two days earlier by the Senate Foreign Relat
Berman's bill -- which is in all respects similar to the Senate Committee's Bill that the government of India has found objectionable and offensive -- contains the additional proviso that in the event of a nuclear test by India, which leads to the automatic termination of the deal, the presidential waiver of this termination could be limited.
Gregory Meeks, speaking to nearly 150 Indian Americans who had come to Capitol Hill as part of a Task Force to express outrage over the Mumbai terror attacks, couldn't contain his euphoria over the swearing in of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American President and the indirect connection to Mahatma Gandhi
