India hopeful Russia will scale down military ties with Pakistan, big deals on way

Amid a note of dissonance over the issue of Russia’s joint military drills with Pakistan, India has voiced confidence that Moscow will reflect on New Delhi’s concerns as it unveiled an ambitious multifarious agenda to galvanize the special and privileged strategic partnership between the two countries.

In an attempt to downplay Moscow’s military outreach to Islamabad, India’s ambassador to Russia Pankaj Saran indicated that a specific incident or episode should not be allowed to shadow the India-Russian relationship, which is special in many ways.

“It’s not legitimate to reduce the relationship to what happened a few days ago,” Mr Saran said when asked by India Writes Network on whether the Pakistan-Russia joint exercises have cast a shadow over the so-called special and privileged relationship between New Delhi and Moscow.

“We have conveyed our concerns to the Russian side. We are confident that Russia will reflect on our concerns,” the Indian envoy told reporters at Taj Exotica Hotel, the venue of the 17thIndia-Russia annual summit and the 8th BRICS summit.

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Rejuvenating BRICS in Goa: What’s on the agenda?

Amid the festering recession in wide swathes of the world and a conflicted geopolitical landscape, India is poised to host the 8th BRICS summit in the picturesque resort city of Goa, which is expected to unveil a raft of new ideas and initiatives,designed to provide an added strategic traction to this influential grouping of emerging powers.

India has declared I4C or IIIIC as the framing mantra for the 8th BRICS summit, which includes Institution Building, Implementation, Integration, Innovation, and Continuity with Consolidation.In a deft word game, the BRICS acronym has been reinvented, with the overarching objective of “Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions” to pressing global challenges.

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US asks Pakistan to act against Hafiz Saeed, supports India’s right to self-defence

In a boost for India’s drive to expose Pakistan’s role in fomenting terror, the US has launched a blistering attack on terror impresario Hafiz Saeed, the virulently anti-India suspected mastermind of the Mumbai carnage, and endorsed India’s surgical strikes against terror camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

Washington’s indictment of Pakistan comes ahead of the BRICS summit in Goa where India will focus on getting the support of emerging powers for pressuring Pakistan to abandoning cross-border terrorism.

The message to Islamabad was clear: stop sheltering terrorists and punish the perpetrators of the 26/11 attacks.

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Behind India’s BIMSTEC-BRICS gamble: How to isolate Pakistan

Marking the near complete isolation of Pakistan in the region, terrorism is set to dominate the agenda of dual summits of BRICS and BIMSTEC countries India is hosting in Goa October 15-16.

With Pakistan showing no sign of abandoning terrorism as an instrument of state policy, the overarching focus of India will be to get both BRICS and BIMSTEC groupings to back a collective approach to combating the scourge. India will be pressing these groupings to support a non-segmented approach to terror, which is necessary in view of the propensity of some countries to portray terrorists as freedom fighters, as Pakistan has done in the case of militants active in Kashmir.

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Modi targets black money, pitches for BRICS Bank by 2016

Fourth months after his BRICS debut in Fortaleza, Brazil, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the leaders of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa in the picturesque Australian city of Brisbane and underlined that the repatriation of black money parked abroad, that runs into billions of dollars, was “a key priority,” and linked it to security challenges facing the world.

Mr Modi, whose government has vowed to vow bring black money kept in secret bank accounts by Indians abroad a national priority, made a strong pitch for “close coordination” on the issue during an informal meeting of the five-nation BRICS leaders on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Brisbane November 15.

Building on the architecture of the BRICS Bank fleshed out in Fortaleza at the July 15 summit, the Indian leader said that BRICS should set 2016 as the target for the inauguration of the BRICS Bank.

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