India and Pakistan resolved to widen their peace dialogue yesterday as they discussed festering issues including their decades-old dispute over Kashmir.
India's Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Khokhar reviewed progress made in previous talks, paving the way for fresh dialogue to begin today. In a joint statement after the talks in New Delhi, the pair said talks had been "productive ... Several useful ideas and suggestions were made by both sides."
PHOTO: AP
India's External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri were scheduled to meet in New Delhi today and tomorrow.
"The Foreign Secretaries discussed ways of taking the process forward," the statement said. "They would be reporting to the foreign ministers with the recommendation that the composite dialogue should be continued with a view to further deepening and broadening the engagement between the two sides."
At the heart of India-Pakistan tensions is Kashmir, where New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of arming Islamic militant groups who cross to the Indian side and carry out terrorist strikes.
The rebel groups have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, seeking Muslim-majority Kashmir's independence from predominantly Hindu India or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. More than 65,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Islamabad denies New Delhi's charge that it helps the militant groups materially. Pakistan also says it is clamping down on rebels on its territory. But India says militants continue to cross from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Sideshow
Meanwhile, as the diplomats met to push forward peace, their border guards play out a jingoistic ritual of confrontation for thousands of onlookers from both sides.
The display of hostility takes place every evening at a flag-lowering ceremony on both sides of the rivals' only border crossing.
Loudspeakers blare out patriotic Indian songs and soon the crowds at the Wagah border crossing begin to chant.
"Hail mother India!" is the cry from 8,000 Indians in a grandstand built beside the border gate, set amid green wheat fields.
"Long live Pakistan!" several thousand Pakistanis shout back from the other side of tall iron gates guarded by soldiers with assault rifles. "God is greatest."
The old rivals came close to a fourth war in 2002 but ties warmed last year, culminating in a summit between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Crowds at the daily ceremony have swelled in the past couple of years to nearly 10,000 on the Indian side from a few hundred before, Indian border guards said.
Groups of Indian school girls dance in the stands and in the middle of the road as the music switches to a 1960s patriotic Bollywood song set to a modern tune.
The chanting reaches a crescendo as border guards dressed in ceremonial uniforms with tufted headgear begin a goose-step march to lower flags at the gate, stomping their boots with enough force to kick up dust on the asphalted road.
"The line between tourism and nationalism does not exist here," said a senior Indian officer.
"Military tensions are down and the soldiers are relaxed but it doesn't matter to the public. They get very excited."
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS