Global Indian News
Act East, and make the Asian dream flower forth. Animated by India’s growing stakes in the Southeast Asia region, Vice-President Hamid Ansari heads to Thailand and Brunei this week to provide a fresh ballast to the country’s Act East policy and to intensify multifarious relations with two of India’s ASEAN partner countries.
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In a delicate diplomatic waltz, India will seek to balance its burgeoning ties with Israel with a forceful reiteration of its commitment to the Palestinian cause during External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to the West Asia region.
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Breakfast and lunch in Kabul, tea in Lahore, dinner in Delhi. And mourning in Pathankot! The gap between the dreamy idyll and the shock of reality is so stark in the perennially conflicted, convoluted India-Pakistan relations that it defies imagination.
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Speed, Secrecy and Sensitivity. In the dying embers of an eventful year of action-packed diplomacy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has staged a spectacular diplomatic blockbuster, kindling a new fire in perennially cold India-Pakistan relations and birthing a new template and vocabulary for this crucial relationship. The triple-S mantra was the net takeaway from PM Modi’s much-dissected surprise trip to Lahore on a Christmas day (a time of renewal and togetherness) to meet birthday boy Nawaz Sharif, and to usher in a new period of hope in the tortured and tortuous saga of India-Pakistan relations.
The Not-Talking is no longer the option, but Not Acting is also not an option in the long run! “That’s like a statesman. Padosi se aise hi rishte hone chahiyen (This is how it should be with neighbours),”as Sushma Swaraj said in a pithy one-liner. Expect surprises to cease surprising you in 2016! Welcome to the new normal future of India-Pakistan relations!
It’s the mother of all surprises – Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to do what his predecessor could only dream about – breakfast in Kabul, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Delhi. In an intriguing tweet, Mr Modi announced that he will be stopping over in Lahore and meet Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his way back from Kabul.
Mr Modi’s sudden announcement of his trip to Lahore is in keeping with secretive out-of-the-box diplomacy that’s becoming his signature style vis-à-vis relations with Pakistan.
India’s Connect Central Asia policy and energy diplomacy are poised for a marked upsurge as Vice President Hamid Ansari heads to Turkmenistan to represent India at the launch of TAPI pipeline – a path-breaking project of regional connectivity and energy security, linking four countries in South Asia and the Central Asia pipeline.
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Call it speed diplomacy, if you will. The friction-free India-Japan ties look set to cruise on a fast track, with the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train deal already done, and waiting to be formally announced during Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s December 11-13 visit to India.
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It’s been a long-winding and tortuous journey for India-Pakistan relations this year, with the first signs of thaw appearing in the Paris winter amid the heated debate on global warming, and more frost melting in the sultry weather of Bangkok.
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India and Malaysia, Southeast Asia’s economic powerhouse, have enhanced their strategic partnership by signing three pacts, including a crucial pact on cyber security, and decided to expand scale up their infrastructure and economic ties by envisaging a more proactive role for Kuala Lumpur in India’s development journey.
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Terrorism dominated the agenda of the just-concluded 18-nation East Asia Summit in the Malaysian capital, with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking the world not to retreat in the face of terror and forge new strategies for combating this global scourge.
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