“We told them we want to send a team to Pakistan. They have welcomed the idea,” National Investigation Agency Director General Sharad Kumar said.
Wednesday, 6 April 2016
Modi to pay key bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia
This will be the first prime ministerial visit from India to the Gulf kingdom after the visit of then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2010.
During that visit, the relationship between the two countries was elevated to “strategic partnership”.
This was after the Delhi Declaration made during then King Abdullah’s historic visit to India in 2006, the first by a Saudi monarch in five decades.
There are four key aspects to India’s relationship with Saudi Arabia: energy cooperation, the nearly three million-strong expatriate Indian community, Haj pilgrimage and security cooperation.
Saudi Arabia is India’s largest crude oil supplier accounting for one-fifth of the total imports. In 2015, India imported $21 billion worth of crude oil from that Gulf nation.
Saudi Arabia is also India’s fourth largest trading partner with exports to that country exceeding $11 billion.
At over 2.96 million, Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and are crucial to the Indian economy as they send over $10 billion in remittances every year.
Over 134,000 Indians go for the Haj pilgrimage every year and almost 300,000 for Umra.
A key aspect of the strategic partnership between the two countries is the defence cooperation agreement signed during then Crown Prince Salman’s visit to India in 2014.
With Saudi Arabia upping the ante against terrorism, security cooperation also has become an important cornerstone of the relationship. In recent times, Riyadh handed over to New Delhi key terror operatives like Abu Jundal and Abdul Aziz alias Gidda.
“India’s ties with Saudi Arabia are special,” Prime Minister Modi said in a statement ahead of his departure from New Delhi.
“Robust people-to-people ties constitute a key component of our engagement. I plan to work with the Saudi leadership to expand and deepen our bilateral relations. Discussions on the regional situation would also be on the agenda,” he said.
The prime minister also said that he wanted Saudi businesses to partner in India’s development plans.
Soon after his arrival in Riyadh on Saturday afternoon, Modi will visit the historic Masmak fortress.
The fortress was taken over by King Abdulaziz in 1902 in a sudden attack which marked the start of the history of the third state of Saudi Arabia.
Thereafter, Modi will meet with members of the Indian community which will be followed by a visit to the L&T workers’ residential complex.
L&T is doing $2 billion worth of work on the $600-billion Riyadh Metro Project.
On Sunday, the prime minister will visit the Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) all-women IT centre.
“It is a very happy thing that he will be doing because this centre provides employment opportunities to Saudi women and this is empowerment of Saudi women,” Mridul Kumar, joint secretary (Gulf) in the external affairs ministry, said at a media briefing in connection with the visit.
“When the centre started two or three years back, there were 80 people in that centre. It has now grown to over 1,000,” he said, adding that 80 percent of the workers there were local Saudi girls.
Stating that this was the first BPO operation by any company in the world in Saudi Arabia, Kumar said that “it is a very important statement that we will be making there”.
After this, Modi will meet with select top Saudi business leaders.
The official ceremony at the Royal Court will start in the afternoon when King Salman will receive the prime minister
King Salman will host a lunch in Modi’s honour in which key Saudi ministers and other leaders will be present,
This will be followed by a delegation-level meeting and signing of agreements.
The prime minister will leave for New Delhi late Sunday afternoon.
Make odd-even ‘permanent’, boxer Vijender Singh tells Kejriwal
Vijender, who has now become a professional boxer, met Kejriwal at the Delhi Secretariat here and congratulated him over the success of the odd-even formula in Delhi in the past and said it needed to be reintroduced.
“The odd-even (scheme) was a huge success and relief. It must be made permanent,” Singh said.
He also invited the chief minister to watch his professional boxing match slated to be held at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here on June 11. Kejriwal accepted the invitation.
The next phase of the odd-even formula will be launched from April 15 to 30 in Delhi. It was last implemented in the national capital from January 1 to 15.
Under the scheme, four-wheelers with odd and even registration numbers can ply on alternate dates. CNG vehicles, ambulances and certain other categories are exempt from the scheme.
Trump doesn’t know much about foreign policy: Obama
“The person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally,” Obama said at a news conference on Friday during the closing of the two-day Nuclear Security Summit, here.
Obama described the US nuclear umbrella for Japan and South Korea, in place of their own arsenals, as “one of the cornerstones of our presence in the Asia Pacific,” which has provided the US peace, prosperity and flowing commerce, CNN reported.
“It has prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation and conflict,” he said, adding “You don’t mess with that. It’s an investment that rests on the sacrifices that our men and women made” in the Second World War.
“We don’t want someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is,” Obama added.
The summit came as the Republican front-runner to replace Obama in the White House made several controversial nuclear proposals this week.
Trump said that nuclear proliferation is the world’s biggest challenge, but also suggested at a CNN town hall on Tuesday that it may be time for Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals so the US can pull back from Asia.
Trump has also suggested re-drawing US security relationships in other regions, arguing that Germany and Saudi Arabia need to do more in their own defence or pay the US more for the protection it offers.
The summit, the final of four Obama has held during his presidency since 2010, drew over 50 leaders from around the world to discuss ways to prevent the use of nuclear weapons and better secure nuclear materials, especially from the threat of nuclear terrorism.
Obama said global efforts to improve nuclear security have removed from circulation material that is equivalent to 150 nuclear weapons, safeguarding it from extremists.
At the opening of the nuclear conference’s Friday session, Obama said the summit’s work — mostly done quietly behind the scenes in the months between high profile gatherings — served the crucial purpose of reducing the chances that nuclear materials could be stolen.
India to finally join nuclear security ‘gift baskets’
Addressing a media briefing here as the summit got underway, Amandeep Singh Gill, joint secretary (disarmament and international security affairs), said that India has decided to join some gift baskets, including those on counter nuclear smuggling and sharing best practices.
Gift basket diplomacy involves an approach to a crucial issue where, if consensus is not reached till the lowest common denominator, then those willing can join in. In other words, it is a system of getting around the system of universal consensus at any multilateral summit.
The US had first introduced the gift basket diplomacy during negotiations in 2011 for the Second Nuclear Security Summit.
Fourteen such gift baskets were put up in the summit held in Seoul next year.
India, which had so far refrained from joining any of these gift baskets, has finally decided to go for it.
Gill said India would join the Trilateral Initiative which is the joint statement of the previous three co-chairs of the nuclear security summit which has been circulated in the form of a document in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“So, this group of countries which India is joining are committed to holding the bar high on nuclear security,” the joint secretary said.
“We will also be joining three other gift baskets in priority areas like counter nuclear smuggling, the sharing of best practices through centres of excellence such as GCNEP (Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership), and finally NSS follow-up through contact group in Vienna,” he said.
In Friday’s summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would underline that India would continue to reflect its nuclear obligations to the international community through its national actions, Gill said.
In the national progress report on the work India has done in terms of nuclear security in the two years since the last summit, Modi would underline the continued priority the country attached to nuclear security at home.
“Second, the prime minister will underline the continued priority we attach to the technology direction of nuclear security,” he said.
As leaders of over 50 nations met for the biennial summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also held bilateral meetings with British Prime Minister Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“My meeting with PM @David_Cameron focused on defence cooperation, @makeinindia& other key issues,” Modi tweeted.
The meeting assumes significance as Tata Steel, after having suffered nearly $3 billion in losses on its British operations, is exploring to put its entire portfolio there up for sale, some 10 years after it forayed into Europe by acquiring Anglo-Dutch Corus for over $8.1 billion.
With around 40,000 jobs at stake, Cameron was expected to take up the matter with Modi during the meeting, according to media reports.
Earlier in the day, Modi met with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and invited Canadian faculty members to teach at institutes of higher learning in India for short stretches.
“He (Modi) said that Canadian professors and teachers, including retired faculty members, could consider coming to India during the harsh winter months in Canada and teaching at Indian universities for periods ranging from three to six months under the GIAN (Global Initiative of Academic Networks),” external affairs ministry spokesman VikasSwarup said at a media briefing here following the meeting.
GIAN is a programme under the union human resources ministry that aims at tapping the talent pool of academia and scientists internationally to encourage their engagement with institutes of higher education in India.
Trudeau, according to Swarup, said that there was “real potential for harnessing the opportunity of helping so many young people in India get better skills and Canada would also be happy to provide help in education and infrastructure support”.
Modi also invited Canadian companies to participate in India’s flagship development programmes such as the smart cities project and in India’s new policy for hydrocarbon sector, in particular for deep sea and high temperature exploration, that came into effect on Friday.
On the sidelines of the summit, Modi also had informal meetings with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
This year’s summit is the fourth and final edition of the biennial affair.
The first summit was held in Washington in 2010 which was followed by the summits in Seoul in 2012 and The Hague in 2014.
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