Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called yesterday for a friendship treaty with Pakistan to help resolve the bitter issues that have bedeviled relations for almost six decades.
"I have a vision that the peacemaking process must ultimately culminate in our two countries entering into a treaty of peace, security and friendship to give meaning and substance to our quest for shared goals," Singh said.
"I make this offer to the people of Pakistan on this historic occasion. I am sure the leadership of Pakistan will reciprocate," he said, while flagging off a new bus link connecting India's Sikh holy city of Amritsar with the Pakistani pilgrimage town of Nankana Sahib.
The bus service is the latest step in attempts to normalize relations between the arch-rivals, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.
The nuclear-armed rivals launched a peace bid two years ago which has so far yielded increased transport links but has not yet made headway on the key issue of Kashmir, which is divided between them but claimed by each in full.
"Instead of looking at each other as adversaries we must have the courage to see each other as supporting the other for the realization of our better tomorrow for all the people of India and Pakistan," Singh said.
"I am convinced we can move forward, if all concerned are willing to accept the ground realities; if all concerned take a long view of history and our destiny," he said.
He was convinced, he said, that it was possible for India and Pakistan to come to a "meaningful" agreement on issues such as the dispute over the Siachen glacier, a border row at Sir Creek and a water dispute in Kashmir.
Indian and Pakistani troops remain eyeball to eyeball at Siachen glacier in Kashmir, at 6,300m the world's highest battlefield; the two sides dispute their border at Sir Creek marsh joining western India and Pakistan; while they are squabbling over waters India plans to dam up at Baglihar in its part of divided Kashmir.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema