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The Indian Express January 06, 2019 Maj. Gen Qassem Soleimani  had “made the death of innocent people his sick passion, contributing to terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London”, President Donald Trump said after the United States had killed the Iranian commander in Baghdad early on Friday. India’s Ministry of External Affairs had reacted cautiously  to Gen Soleimani’s assassination — noting that “a senior Iranian leader has been killed by the US”, underlining that “peace, stability and security in this region is of utmost importance to India” and it was “vital that the situation does not escalate further”, and urging “restraint”. The MEA statement did not mention Gen Soleimani by name; and India is yet to react to Trump’s mention of his “terrorist plots” in New Delhi. India’s outgoing ambassador in Washington DC, Harsh Shringla, who will now take charge as foreign secretary, “paid a farewell call” on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, but there w...

Hindustan Times Dated: November 23, 2019 It is important for Pakistan to fully implement the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to counter terror financing, a top American diplomat has said. The implementation of the FATF recommendations, besides taking action against terrorist networks, would help the US revise its travel advisory against Pakistan, the diplomat said in response to a question. “We want to see improvements in Pakistan’s security situation so that we can reflect that in a travel advisory,” Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Well said at an event at the Wilson Center think tank on Thursday. “Some of the steps that, I think, are very important are Pakistan’s implementation, full implementation of the Financial Action Task Force requirement to counter terrorism financing, to prosecute and seize the assets of members of terrorist organisations,” Wells said. In its last travel advisory issued on April 9 ...

Press Trust of India Dated: November 22, 2019 Developing strategic partnership with India is a critical element of President Donald Trump's South Asia strategy, a senior administration official said India provides scholarships to 1,000 Afghan students each year out of the 16,000 Afghans who are studying in India, she told the audience Indian ambassador to the US Harsh Vardhan Shringla said India has played an active role in the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan since 2001 Washington:  Developing strategic partnership with India is a critical element of President Donald Trump's South Asia strategy, a senior administration official said Thursday noting that there were encouraging results of the move. "The United States welcomes India's substantial investment in and assistance to Afghanistan. And we will continue to support efforts to achieve an honourable and enduring outcome in Afghanistan that preserves our investment in Afghanistan...

Hindustan Times, November 4, 2019 Bottlenecks in RCEP deal may be removed next year The signing of the 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is expected to be pushed back to 2020, delaying a deal whose negotiations began seven years ago and which India has insisted must strike a balance between market access and services. RCEP comprises the 10 Asean states and six of the grouping’s FTA partners—Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea—and leaders of the 16 countries will discuss the deal at a meeting in Bangkok on Monday. An agreement will lead to the creation of the world’s largest free trade region of 3.6 billion people, or nearly half the global population, with 30% of the global GDP. “Most market access negotiations have been completed and the few outstanding bilateral issues will be resolved by Feb 2020,” said a draft agreement obtained by  AFP . India’s position on some of its key concerns has resulted in speculation that t...

Live Mint September 15,2019 Sandipan Deb On 7 September, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had cancelled meetings planned for the next day with Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and “called off peace negotiations" on Afghanistan. The immediate reason he cited was a Taliban attack in Kabul that had killed 12 people, including an American soldier. Later, he said that the talks were “dead". This is good news for Afghanistan, India and the world. The 11-month-long US-Taliban negotiations had deeply disturbing implications right from the start. Trump’s goal was to end an 18-year-long war, the longest the US has ever fought, and get the 14,000 US troops still stationed there back home. The US negotiator was Pashtun-origin diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad. Pakistan, which has financed, armed and provided a safe haven for the Taliban for decades, acted as facilitator to bring the Taliban to the table. The key condition the Islamist group laid down, which t...

Devirupa Mitra, 18/AUG/2019 There was some mystery surrounding Russia’s positioning in New York in the run-up to the UN Security Council informal consultations on Kashmir. Moscow backed India but the support came with a twist – a reference to Security Council resolutions Delhi regards as long defunct. On Friday, the UNSC discussed India’s move to revoke the special constitutional status of Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two union territories. While the meeting took place behind closed doors, it was the first time that the members of UNSC conferred on “India-Pakistan question” since December 1971. The Council’s president, Joanna Wronecka of Poland, however, did not get the green light from all members to issue a public statement, much to India’s respite. China came out at the end of the meeting to convey a “general will” of the members against “unilateral actions”. But India’s envoy to the UN, Syed Akbaruddin, contended that China wasn’t being honest. Multiple di...

THE DAWN JULY 02, 2019 KHALEEQ KIANI The government has empowered the federal secretaries to have full control over development and non-development funds of their respective ministries and attached organisations and be responsible to surrender all unspent funds to the consolidated fund at least 25 days before the close of fiscal year. This has been done with coming into force of the Public Finance Management Act 2019 as part of the Finance Bill 2019 that also completely binds the ministries and their secretaries not to keep public funds in commercial banks. As such, all funds would remain in the government’s single treasury account and could be withdrawn by principal accounting officers (PAOs) anytime in line with allocations without going through the financial advisors. A senior official explained to Dawn that the new fiscal management regime was a practical beginning of an end to fiscal federalism and would minimise the red tape in implementation of public sector developmen...

Hindustan times Dated: May 15, 2019      Sri Lankan government has banned three Islamist extremist groups, including the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) that carried out the country’s worth terror attack on Easter Sunday in which over 250 people were killed. President Maithripala Sirisena issued an extraordinary gazette banning a number of extremist organisations on Monday. He also prohibited the use of drones in the country till further notice. According to the Gazette the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ), the Jamaathe Millaathe Ibrahim (JMI), and the Willayath As Seylani (WAS) organisations have been banned. On April 21, nine suicide bombers, including a woman, carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels, killing 258 people, including 44 foreigners 10 of them Indians, and injuring over 500 others. The Islamic State terror group claimed the attacks, but the government blamed local Islamist...

The Hindu Dated: May 6, 2019     Order prohibits purchase of equipment from companies that pose security risk China warned the U.S. on Thursday against further harming trade ties after President Donald Trump effectively barred Chinese telecom giant Huawei from the U.S. market, escalating tensions between the world’s top economic powerhouses. At the same time, Beijing’s diplomatic relations with Ottawa further soured as China formally arrested two Canadians on suspicion of snatching state secrets in a case seen as retaliation over Canada’s arrest of a Huawei executive on a U.S. extradition request. The spat over Huawei adds to the uncertainty over efforts to revive a deal that would end a bruising U.S.-China trade war after the two sides hiked tariffs n recent days. “The U.S.’s bullying and maximum pressure tactics have caused the China-U.S. economic and trade talks to suffer a serious setback,” Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a weekly press briefing...

Financial Express Dated: May 15, 2019     The declaration also made a strong case for preserving flexibilities that are being offered to developing countries under the WTO's special and differential treatment (S&DT) provisions, as they are rights of developing nations. As many as 17 developing nations, including India and China, on Tuesday pitched for resolving the deadlock over the appointment of members to the WTO’s appellate body at the earliest, warning of a complete paralysis in the dispute settlement mechanism of the multilateral trade body by December if members don’t act fast. This was part of a declaration released after a two-day ministerial meeting of 22 developing and least developed member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in New Delhi. The meeting was held in the shadow of an escalating trade war between the US and China. The Delhi Declaration was signed by 17 of the 22 participating countries, while five others — Kazakhstan, Tur...

One India Dated: May15, 2019 Vicky Nanjappa         New Delhi, May 15: Pakistan says that it has been acting against the Jaish-e-Mohammad in the aftermath of the listing of its chief, Maulana Masood Azhar by the United Nations.  With these developments the activities of the Jaish-e-Mohammad are likely to come down in India, especially in Jammu and Kashmir. However Pakistan has plan B and that would be to prop up the Lashkar-e-Tayiba to fill in the vacuum.  The Lashkar leadership has been asked to be prepared for a long and bloody haul in Kashmir. The intent of the ISI would be to keep the JeM off the radar until and the heat and dust on it settles.  One had witnessed a similar strategy in the wake of the international heat on the Lashkar-e-Tayiba being upped a few years back. We had witnessed the JeM going from dormant to lethal during that period.  In the aftermath of the ban, the JeM has been operating under a new n...