Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said yesterday he would visit Islamabad on July 15 for talks on restarting stalled peace negotiations, raising hopes of an improvement in ties between the nuclear-armed rival countries.
Relations between the two countries went into a diplomatic freeze after India blamed Pakistan-based militants for the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, which killed 166 people.
“I’m looking forward to these talks,” Krishna told a news conference in the Indian capital after accepting the invitation from Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi during a 25-minute telephone conversation yesterday.
“Let us hope that these talks will be helpful in bringing our two countries closer together and let’s hope that our efforts will be fruitful,” Krishna said.
“It was a good conversation that we had,” Qureshi told a news conference in Islamabad, adding he would come to New Delhi for a next round of talks.
The emergence of a roadmap to normalize ties is good news for the US, which is keen for peace between the two countries, as their proxy war for influence in Afghanistan is seen as hampering Washington-led efforts to bring peace there.
An easing of tensions along Pakistan’s eastern borders with India would also make Islamabad more willing to commit troops to a possible ground operation in North Waziristan, which officials say is home to a number of militant groups.
New Delhi has long complained about Islamabad not cracking down on Pakistani-based militants launching deadly attacks inside India over the disputed Kashmir region and elsewhere in the country. India has also blamed Pakistani groups for attacks on its diplomats in Afghanistan.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing