Officials from Pakistan and India on Thursday agreed to expedite work to operationalise the Kartarpur Corridor, Foreign Office Spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisal said in a press briefing soon after talks on the matter concluded on a cordial note in Attari, India. Dr Faisal, who was heading the Pakistani side during the bilateral dialogue, told reporters after the meeting that though differences persist on a few points, the meeting went well overall. Technical experts from Pakistan and India also had a discussion on key matters, he said, adding that the meeting was held in a positive and conducive environment. The experts discussed issues relating to the corridor, its construction, road, and other technicalities. Dr Faisal termed the m...
March 14, 2019 at 4:47 pm | News Desk
The Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen Zubair Mahmood Hayat, on Tuesday alleged that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had established a cell in 2015 dedicated to sabotaging China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects in Pakistan. While addressing a seminar in Islamabad, Gen Hayat revealed that: "RAW established a new cell with a special allocation of over $500 million in 2015 to sabotage CPEC projects [in Pakistan]." "India's indirect interference in Pakistan is manifested in sponsoring Tehreek-i-Taliban-Pakistan, Baloch and other sub-nationalist outfits and many other terrorist groups," he added. "India has set up a Balochistan operational cell under RAW to devise a radical force for subversion and terror...
November 14, 2017 at 5:07 pm | News Desk
A PIL was filed in the Delhi High Court on Tuesday seeking international court's intervention in securing the immediate release of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death over spying allegations by a military court in Pakistan. The PIL seeks response from the Centre on exploring remedies via International Court of Justice (ICJ) for securing Kulbhushan Jadhav's release. The move comes a day after Pakistan's Army categorically ruled out consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav despite the Indian government making a strong case for gaining access to the Indian prisoner on death row. Jadhav, 46, was awarded death sentence by the Field General Court Martial last week, evoking a sharp reaction in India which warne...
April 18, 2017 at 3:39 pm | News Desk
China is eager to see Russia join The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, according to a recently published article in Globaltimes, though the Russian embassy in Islamabad denied the reports. “Russia’s participation in the CPEC, including the use of the Gwadar Port, could give a boost to Sino-Russian cooperation and be a demonstration project of One Belt and One Road (OBOR) that will enhance future multinational cooperation,” writes Li Xing. That’s certainly true. A sound infrastructure is a pre-condition for the economic integration of neighboring countries. But the real reason behind China’s eagerness to bring Russia to CPEC project is elsewhere in my opinion: use Russia to appease India, which claims control ...
January 9, 2017 at 7:54 pm | News Desk
Washington: The US government said on Friday it had approved the sale to Pakistan of up to eight F-16 fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin Corp, radar and other equipment in a deal valued at $699 million (Dh2.5 billion). The Pentagon’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign arms sales, said it had notified lawmakers about the possible deal. The agency said the F-16s would allow Pakistan’s Air Force to operate in all-weather environments and at night, while improving its self-defence capability and bolstering its ability to conduct counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations. Lawmakers have 30 days to block the sale, although such action is rare since deals are well-vetted before any formal notifica...
February 14, 2016 at 9:06 am | News Desk
NEW DELHI: India has accelerated plans to buy drones from Israel that can be armed and can allow the military to carry out strikes overseas with less risk to personnel, defence sources have said. The news comes weeks after Pakistan reported using a home made drone in combat when it attacked militants on its soil, raising the prospect of a new front in the nuclear-armed neighbors' standoff over Kashmir that has twice spilled into war. The plan to acquire Israeli Herons was first conceived three years ago, but in January the military wrote to the government asking for speedy delivery, the sources said, as Pakistan and China develop their own drone warfare capabilities. India has already deployed Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (U...
September 22, 2015 at 4:40 pm | News Desk
Farhan Bokhari High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Pakistan could have the world’s third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons after the US and Russia within a decade if it continues to build up to 20 nuclear warheads annually, a new report warns. The report, written by two respected US analysts and published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, concluded that Pakistan is outpacing India, with its neighbour and rival appearing to produce just five warheads annually. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this articl...
August 29, 2015 at 12:06 pm | News Desk
Aakar Patel Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to be congratulated for his brave move in announcing he will visit Pakistan. I do not only mean brave from the point of view of physical courage. I have been to Pakistan many times and not felt unsafe, and it is clear that Modi will find that he is given security of the highest standard. But even so, Pakistan’s most protected man, former president Pervez Musharraf had his convoy bombed twice and its former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed not that long ago. So Modi is brave in agreeing to go where even cricket teams have refused. The second way in which he has been brave is that he has defied many in our media and also our strategic affairs experts in reachi...
August 18, 2015 at 2:26 pm | News Desk
Fanny Ragot Recently, a new strategic dialogue was held between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Taliban leadership in the hill city of Murree, Pakistan. These negotiations were coordinated by China, illustrating Beijing’s recent commitment to support Kabul in pacifying its country. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, elected in mid-2014, has been reaffirming his willingness to set the wheels of negotiations in motion. It implies engaging in negotiations with Pakistan to resolve the problem of Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, across the Durand Line. While the dialogue is still new, China appears to be brokering these discussions. That Beijing is evidently involving itself in shaping the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan mor...
August 17, 2015 at 6:17 pm | News Desk
BEIJING (Reuters) - Nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India will start the process of joining a security bloc led by China and Russia at a summit in Russia later this week, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Monday, the first time the grouping has expanded since it was set up in 2001. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) groups China, Russia and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, while India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Mongolia are observers. "As the influence of the SCO's development has expanded, more and more countries in the region have brought up joining the SCO," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping told a news briefing."...India and Pakistan's admission to the SCO...
July 6, 2015 at 3:17 pm | News Desk
NEW DELHI: India has placed the Catholic charity Caritas on a government watch list, an official and news reports said Tuesday, in a growing crackdown on foreign organisations operating in the country. A home ministry official told AFP that Caritas had violated India's foreign funding laws by financing groups that were working “against the country”. He said Caritas had been placed on a list of organisations needing prior government approval to receive or distribute funds in India, a move also reported by the Indian Express daily. “There was clear violation of foreign funding law,” said the official, who asked not to be named, citing funding for groups which protested against a nuclear plant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. T...
June 23, 2015 at 2:30 pm | News Desk
UNITED NATIONS: Reaffirming its commitment to eliminate all terrorists “without distinction,” top Pakistani diplomat Maleeha Lodhi warned of a forceful response to any attempt to destabilise parts of Pakistan or to attack its territorial integrity. “Let me be clear: we will be relentless in rooting out terrorism, whosoever its sponsors, external or internal,” Ambassador Lodhi told the UN Security Council on Monday. “Any effort to destabilise parts of our country or to attack its territorial integrity will be responded to forcefully,” the Pakistan envoy said in a debate on the situation in Afghanistan. Acknowledging that terrorism remained a common challenge, she told the 15-member council that Pakistan had condemned the recen...
June 23, 2015 at 2:12 pm | News Desk
India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has long faced allegations of meddling in its neighbors' affairs. "India has always used Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan. India has over the years been financing problems in Pakistan", said Chuck Hage, the defense secretary (2013-2015), in a written speech at Oklahoma's Cameron University in 2011. Chuck Hagel had served on the US Senate Intelligence Committee before becoming the Pentagon chief. Since, Narendra Modi took over as the prime minister, RAW has stepped up its covert war against Pakistan. Prime Minister Modi appointed Ajit Doval, a well-known hawk, as his National Security Advisor. In the 1990s, Mr. Doval served as an undercover RAW agen...
June 16, 2015 at 9:53 pm | News Desk
Over the course of the past eighteen months relations between Australia and Indonesia has steadily deteriorated. It’s a relationship that has historically been a challenging one for Australia for a variety of reasons, but the recent fissures are in reality more driven by the rise of populist leaders in both countries with a penchant for xenophobic dog whistling. From an Australian perspective, the outlook for our partnership with Indonesia looked like heading into rough waters as soon as the country elected the Liberal-National coalition in September of 2013. This was due to the fact that Tony Abbott, the Coalition’s leader and now Prime Minister, had as one of the few pillars of his campaign a commitment to "turn back the boats." ...
June 10, 2015 at 1:06 am | News Desk
Have you ever watched a camel take time for an energy boost? If food is scarce a camel will simply dine on bones, fish, leather, or even the owner's tent. It can consume thorns and twigs. The camel's oral cavity lining is tough enough that almost anything can be eaten without injury to the mouth. Camels are not picky. But we should be glad they cannot talk. If they talked like they eat it would be out of both sides of their mouths. The disarticulated jaw with the big teeth are quite a sight to behold. It would be absolutely mesmerizing to watch a camel speak. Camels are ships of the desert. As a species, they are known by fancier names. But when considering how they were created, camels should be known by a more simple designatio...
October 5, 2014 at 12:36 pm | News Desk
Prime minister Narendra Modi exultant as India’s landmark achievement puts China in the shade India has become the first nation to send a satellite into orbit around Mars on its first attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so. Mission control in the southern Indian city of Bangalore received confirmation of the success at 7.41am Wednesday, local time. The satellite Mangalyaan had entered the orbit of the red planet 12 minutes earlier, but the message needed to traverse the 400m miles (650m km) to Earth. India now joins an elite club of nations who have successfully carried out interplanetary space missions, and has scored a significant point in its rivalry with China. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, who won power in May ...
September 24, 2014 at 10:00 am | News Desk