British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday headed from China to India, hoping for movement from New Delhi on tackling climate change while also building on trade and investment links.
The prime minister's first visit to New Delhi since taking office last June is expected to follow similar themes to those seen in Beijing and Shanghai, where he said Sino-British relations had risen to new levels across the board.
Relations between India and its former colonial power are "at their healthiest for a very long time," Britain's Foreign Office said on its Web site.
Brown was due to swap notes yesterday with his counterpart Manmohan Singh, who was in China himself less than a week ago.
During that visit, India and China, whose rapid economic growth in recent years has given them increasing clout on the world stage, agreed to increase bilateral trade to US$60 billion by 2010.
Brown and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
Britain is India's fourth-largest global trading partner, accounting for 3.56 percent of India's foreign trade in 2006 and last year, official Indian figures showed.
India has emerged as the second-largest investor in Britain, with investments totaling over £1 billion (US$1.9 billion) in the last year alone.
Brown is aware that the rise of China and India -- the world's two most populous nations -- is shifting the global economic balance and has said it is vital for countries to work with them to address key international issues.
On climate change, Brown has said he wanted to use the four-day Asian tour to secure China and India's backing for a new deal to cut global warming after the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012.
But as developing economies, New Delhi and Beijing are loathe to sign up to internationally-agreed binding targets on emissions cuts and instead want more help on creating new, cleaner energy technology.
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna indicated ahead of the trip that Brown would do well not to push too hard on a commitment to binding cuts, saying carbon emissions in India were "far lower" than in many other countries.
"We want progress [on climate change] to be made but it has to be in line with our own development priorities," he told reporters.
Brown will also meet Indian President Pratibha Patil and is expected to sign a new deal on higher education and launch a British Council-run scheme to train 750,000 more English teachers in India over the next five years.
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
An American man identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine last year while fighting under contract for the Russian military, an investigation by independent Russian media said. Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on April 4 last year in “Eastern Europe,” an obituary published by his family said. He was the son of Juliane Gallina, who was appointed the deputy director for digital innovation at the CIA in February last year. The story of how the son of a top-ranking US spy died fighting for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of