Tag: Pakistan

Pakistan wakes up, says India’s growth crucial for SAARC’s success

- by India Writes Network

Signalling a turnaround in Islamabad’s attitude towards the India story, Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit has underscored that India should continue to achieve higher growth rate and termed the country a major driving force in the success of entire South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries.

“If India rises, confidence of the entire region rises. We in South Asia do believe that India does have a wherewithal and resolves to step to the plate and ensure that it achieves its economic goals, because if India rises we are confident the entire region will rise with India,” said Mr Basit at a meeting organized by industry body ASSOCHAM in New Delhi on March 30.

The envoy also stressed on the importance of creating a level playing field among the members of SAARC, and said that economic development shouldn’t be muted in the political noise.

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India, Pakistan renew talks, terror, border peace top agenda

- by India Writes Network

India and Pakistan renewed their engagement after months of frosty tensions as Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar conveyed New Delhi’s concerns on terrorism and 26/11 justice even as the two subcontinental neighbours agreed to narrow down differences to find common ground and map the way forward.
Mr Jaishaknkar held wide-ranging talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary, seven months after India had cancelled foreign secretary-level talks on account of Pakistan’s envoy’s meeting with Kashmiri separatist leaders.
Mr Jaishankar struck a cautiously optimistic note on the future trajectory of this accident-prone relationship.
“Naturally, my visit provided an opportunity to discuss our bilateral relations. We engaged on each other’s concerns and interests in an open manner. We agreed to work together to find common ground and narrow differences,” Mr Jaishankar said after the talks.

India’s top diplomat stressed that he “reiterated our known concerns on cross border terrorism, including on the Mumbai case.”

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Is India firmly aligned with the US now?

- by India Writes Network

After the high profile summit with US President Barak Obama, has Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed India firmly in the US camp, much to the chagrin of the old foreign policy establishment in Delhi that reveled in the business of non-policy making under cover of non-alignment.At the outset, our so-called non-alignment was not really so, as we were clearly in the Soviet camp for reasons not entirely of our own making. Pandit Nehru was ideologically sympathetic to the Soviet Union while his daughter went a step further and cemented the relationship with Moscow with the Indo-Soviet treaty in 1971 prior to the launching of war to liberate East Pakistan. The fact that Nixon-Kissinger led America at that time was openly ’tilting’ in favour of Gen. Yahya Khan and towards Mao’s Communist China instead of a ‘socialist democracy’ in India was one of the contributing reasons for our alignment with the USSR. In fact, before signing the Indo-Soviet Treaty, Indira Gandhi went to London and Washington to seek their support to end the massacre in East Pakistan, but returned empty handed.

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