|
|
UK’s
Blair stays cautious LONDON, May 16: British Prime Minister Tony Blair launches his election manifesto today, including a pledge not to raise direct tax rates but leaving......more Indo-Pak
tension WASHINGTON, May 16: Terming the tensions between India and Pakistan as the "most dangerous threat to world peace today",.......more
India
willing to KUALA LUMPUR, May 16: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today declared that India.....more |
|
US to maintain balance of WASHINGTON, May 16: The US should maintain the balance of power among India and other big nations in Asia to serve its interest in the region and also promote an inclusive security dialogue among all states of Asia, a US think-tank has recommended. "The US should pursue a balance of power strategy among those major rising powers and key regional states in asia which are not part of the existing US alliance structure including China, India and a currently weakened Russia" the US Air-Force Rand Corporation project recommends.........more Breakthrough
on COLOMBO, May 16: A ‘breakthrough’ on the contentious issue of a ceasefire by the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE is on the anvil, political and diplomatic sources said today. Media reports said the peace talks were likely to be held at the Hague in the Netherlands by this month-end or early June.......more After interactions with US, NEW DELHI, May 16: Close on the heels of India’s high-level interaction with US and Russia, the stage is now set for intensive parleys here tomorrow with top ranking Chinese politburo member Li Changchun. Li will hold talks with External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh on the entire gamut of bilateral relations besides international and regional issues of mutual concern.....more |
 |
 |
UK’s Blair stays cautious on eurobefore election LONDON, May 16: British Prime Minister Tony Blair launches his election manifesto today, including a pledge not to raise direct tax rates but leaving bigger questions such as adoption of the euro currency unanswered. A senior source in the ruling Labour Party said the blueprint for Blair’s re-election bid at the June seven general election would offer nothing new on his wait-and-see policy over joining Europe’s single currency. Nor would there be anything specific in its foreign policy section about how to approach controversial US plans for a missile defence system, the source said. Blair will unveil his second-term manifesto, "ambitions for Britain", in the english midlands city of Birmingham. He will do so against a golden backdrop of opinion polls apparently guaranteeing him victory by a handsome margin. The latest ICM poll in the Guardian Newspaper on Wednesday put labour 15 points ahead of the opposition conservatives. Labour were on 46 percent, the conservatives on 31 percent and the liberal democrats 16 percent. Other polls have pitched Blair’s lead as high as 20 points, a sign that he could even improve on his landslide 179-seat parliamentary majority in the 1997 election. The labour source said there would be no change to the policy on euro entry — that the Government liked the idea in principle but would only do so if it judged the economics to be right and if the British public agreed in a referendum. "It sets out the position ... We have rehearsed for you many times before," he said. On US President George W Bush’s national missile defence programme, which could protect the United States and its allies from missile attack, there would be nothing new, the labour source said. The plan may eventually require changes to US radar stations in Northern England but Britain says US officials have not yet requested any upgrade of the facilities. Blair says he has taken no decision on whether to back the project and has urged Bush to consult. But his spokesman recently signalled broad support for the plans. A pledge not to raise personal tax rates will be included in the manifesto, as will a commitment not to jeopardise the economic stability that has been a feature of labour’s four years in power. William Hague’s conservatives have tried to claim the low tax mantle by promising to spend eight billion pounds (11.36 billion) less than labour on key services and cut taxes with the savings. Blair has promised billions of pounds of Government money for schools, hospitals, police and transport and he will accuse the conservatives of planning to cut those services to the bone. "This general election is in many ways even more important than the last one," Blair will say in a foreward to the 44-page manifesto. "The conservatives have swung further to the right." Taking a personal sweep through recent history, Blair will say the 20th century was dominated by conservatives who held back Britain by not offering opportunity for all. "The British people achieved great things in the 20th century but never fully realised (their) potential," Blair will say. "In the 21st century we have the opportunity to break through that glass ceiling." He will also take a sideswipe at former conservative premier Margaret Thatcher. Under Thatcher, "Britain was a land of opportunity — but only for the few", he said on Tuesday. But the headlines could be snatched by official jobs data. The economy is the Jewel in labour’s crown, boasting unemployment and home loan rates at the lowest level in decades. Most economists expect another fall in unemployment in april, taking the total to around 980,000. But some expect the number to rise for only the seventh time since the jobless rate began declining in the early 1990s. (REUTERS) |
|
Indo-Pak
tension "most dangerous" threat WASHINGTON, May 16: Terming the tensions between India and Pakistan as the "most dangerous threat to world peace today", an influential US think-tank has asked Washington to encourage Islamabad to cease its support to Islamic militants in Kashmir and settle its differences with New Delhi peacefully. Cautioning the US against isolating Pakistan in the process of improving its relation with India, the Rand Corporation think-tank said, "the US should do whatever it can ... To prevent Pakistan from drifting into an embittered fundamentalism". "Pakistan should be encouraged to cease its support to terrorists operating in South Asia and beyond... It should be urged to peacefully resolve its differences with India over Kashmir, to stop supporting militants operating there and to cease its politico-military support to the Taliban in Afghanistan," it said in a project prepared for US Air Force. Low-level harassment of India, like the Kargil conflict, represents "Pakistan’s best chance - albeit not a very good one- of gaining control of Kashmir. As long as the indigenous insurgency is not fully suppressed, Pakistan can support it at a low cost to itself while imposing a larger cost on India," it said. In the past, India had adopted a defensive stance towards this sort of harassment. A repetition of Kargil incident could, however, lead New Delhi to consider a more forceful response to solve the problem, said the report. The report said Kashmir provided a "rare point of unity" for Pakistan, and it employs "Islam-inspired guerrilla warriors" who might otherwise cause trouble in Pakistan itself where Islamic fundamentalism is gaining political influence." In the context of India and Pakistan acquiring nuclear capability, the report suggested it might be desirable for the us to increase reconnaissance activities by sending additional surveillance assets to the region. It said an outbreak of war between them would create high level of concern with respect to the safety of their nuclear arsenal and the possibility of their use in the conflict. The US military might be tasked to provide these assets as well as operate them from the international water and airspace or over the territory of combatants — either with or, in the extreme situation, without permission to do so, it said. It also suggested that a single US command may be given jurisdiction over India and Pakistan instead of putting Pakistan under the central command and India under commander-in-chief, Pacific. The US objectives of maintaining peace and enhancing stability in the sub-continent would require a delicate balancing act, one key component of which would be military-to-military engagement, it added. (PTI) |
|
India willing to commit itself to a N-weapon free zone: PM KUALA LUMPUR, May 16: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today declared that India was willing to commit itself to a nuclear weapons free zone in southeast Asia. Speaking on Indian-ASEAN relations at the institute of diplomatic and foreign relations here, Mr Vajpayee said the security of India and that of ASEAN was closely interlinked. "We respect the status of Southeast Asia as a nuclear weapons free zone and, as a nuclear weapon state, we are willing to convert this recognition into a de jure commitment", Mr Vajpayee said. The address to the institute was the last engagement of Mr Vajpayee’s four-day visit to Malaysia. Apart from the security environment, Mr Vajpayee also dwelt at length on the second generation of economic reforms launched by his Government and the potential for economic cooperation between India and ASEAN countries. "We believe that a multi-polar world order would provide the best guarantee of equal security for all states", the Prime Minister said. He said India had been campaigning for nuclear disarmament for decades after its independence but much of the world went along with the discriminatory nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Mr Vajpayee said the NPT preserved the right to nuclear weaponization of a few countries, even while keeping the rest in a permanently disarmed condition. "The nuclear weapon states showed no intention of implementing Article VI of the treaty, which committed them to nuclear disarmament in a phased manner", he said. The Prime Minister, observing that India had not violated any treaty, agreement or understanding when it conducted the nuclear tests three years ago, said there was a better understanding in the world of New Delhi’s decision to maintain a minimum credible nuclear deterrent. "We have declared a unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear tests. We have a declared policy of no first use and a commitment never to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. We have proved that India is neither a proliferation threat nor a exporter of sensitive nuclear or missile technology. This cannot be said to be true of all parties to the NPT". India, he said was engaged in a process of dialogue and consultation with friends and partners to help shape a new security environment free of confrontation and tension, and its security dialogue with the ASEAN could also include this theme. "Threats like religious extremism, drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism have cast a dark shadow over our region. India has been a victim of state-sponsored and cross-border terrorism seeking to redraw national boundaries. Such violence in the name of holy war is a grave menace, especially to pluralistic societies and endangers a peaceful and civlised global order." Mr Vajpayee said India’s immediate requirement as it launched the second generation of economic reforms was infrastructural support in the form of communications, roads, ports and power. "These were areas of strength and expertise in the asean countries and we look forward to their participation in these infrastructure projects in India". "India and ASEAN are on the same side of the socioeconomic divide in the debate on globalisation. Opening up our national economies to global markets cannot become a mantra at the cost of equitable development and social justice. The passion for rapid globalisation should be tempered by compassion for unintended victims". The Prime Minister said India had consciously focused on rejuvenation of its ties with countries of the ASEAN by launching the ‘look east’ policy. "But even as we looked east, ASEAN moved west. The admission of new countries brought ASEAN literally to India’s door. From a maritime neighbour, ASEAN became our close neighbour with a land border of nearly 1,600 km. This has added a new dimension to India-ASEAN relations". Mr Vajpayee noted that Asian countries were today at the forefront of developing and introducing cutting edge technologies into their economies. "We are in the very epicentre of the knowledge revolution. This provides us with a major opportunity to overcome our historical disabilities and to compress the time gap between successive levels of development". He said each of the Asian countries had achieved expertise and even dominance in certain areas of technology and it was crucial that the nations should cooperate in exploiting the synergies, rather than duplicating capacities or undercutting each other. A link up between some of India’s software sectors with hardware capabilities of southeast Asian countries was one example. The Prime Minister said appropriate lessons should be learnt from the financial and economic crises in the region in 1997 so that developing economies do not remain vulnerable to destabilisaiton or stagnation from a headlong rush into globalisation. Prime Minister Mahathir and he had agreed on the urgent need for an early reform of the international financial architecture, Mr Vajpayee said. Recalling his call for a global dialogue for development during his address to the US Congress last year, Mr Vajpayee said that was prompted by the concern that some of the most vital issues of development and poverty alleviation were in danger of being marginalised in the hurry to introduce new regimes in trade, investment and intellectual property. The dialogue, he said should include in its ambit such impediments to development as the international financial architecture and the imposition of impossibly harsh timetables for globalisation. "Our economic engagement with ASEAN will also be based on these perspectives. We seek a dialogue bilaterally and multilaterally with countries of the region to harmonise our positions on key issues of development, trade and investment, and environment". (UNI) |
|
US to maintain balance of power in Asia: Think Tank WASHINGTON, May 16: The US should maintain the balance of power among India and other big nations in Asia to serve its interest in the region and also promote an inclusive security dialogue among all states of Asia, a US think-tank has recommended. "The US should pursue a balance of power strategy among those major rising powers and key regional states in asia which are not part of the existing US alliance structure including China, India and a currently weakened Russia" the US Air-Force Rand Corporation project recommends. The objective of this balance of power component is twofold: it seeks to prevent any one of these states from effectively threatening the security of another while simultaneously preventing any combination of these states from ‘bandwagoning’ to undercut us strategic interests in Asia, it explains. The team of the rand think tank was headed by Zalmay Khalilzad and seven others, including an NRI, Ashley Tellis, who has appended his own recommendation for a "deeper engagement with India consistent with the latter’s steadily growing economic and strategic capabilities, coupled with the continued reassurance of Pakistan despite the downgrading of past strategic and military ties." Rand wants the US to "use its influence to encourage the resolution of the Kashmir dispute through peaceful means and prevent an outbreak of a regional nuclear war in South Asia." "Better relations between India and the US makes sense from a variety of perspectives," Rand says. For instance, the two nations are the world’s largest and second-largest democracies. Moreover, the development of the Indian software industry implies a close connection of its economies while both share common interests in reducing instability in Asia. The ultimate common interest, however, is probably the desire to hedge against the future emergence of a more powerful and assertive China, it says. There are, however, several steps the US can take to improve bilateral relations by making such relations politically palatable to Indian leaders. One such step would be to restore the regular high-level dialogue initiated in 1985; Another would be to increase the number of military-to-military contacts similar to those now conducted with the Chinese, Rand states in its recommendations which will be circulated among all key policy-makers. Other helpful initiatives would involve dropping the last remnants of the sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests by revitalizing trade and joint development of civilian technology, information technology and services. Yet another area of increased cooperation and informational exchange should centre on "training and panning of peacekeeping missions", it points out. (AGENCIES) |
|
Breakthrough on Lanka issue likely in the next few days COLOMBO, May 16: A ‘breakthrough’ on the contentious issue of a ceasefire by the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE is on the anvil, political and diplomatic sources said today. Media reports said the peace talks were likely to be held at the Hague in the Netherlands by this month-end or early June. Norwegian Special Envoy Erik Solheim after meeting President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Tamil and Muslim Party leaders, is embarking on a tour to LTTE-controlled Wanni to meet the rebel leadership to finalise the schedule for the pace talks. A pro-LTTE website said Mr Solheim will be in Wanni today and tomorrow and will have discussions with LTTE’s political wing leader S P Tamilchlevam. The meeting is expected to ‘focus on step to bring about a suitable atmosphere for productive negotiations to be held between the two parties in the conflict’. The state-owned ‘Daily News’ said Mr Solheim met Mrs Kumaratunga last night and held extensive discussions. He had also met Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Before meeting them, the Norwegian Envoy held discussions with Sri Lankan Muslim Congress leader Rauf Hakeem and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) general secretary R Sampanthan. This is Mr Solheim’s second visit to Wanni during the last seven months. Last time, in November, he visited Wanni and met V Prabhakaran, who conveyed the LTTE’s readiness for peace talks with the Government. The diplomatic sources said the latest mission was possibly the toughest challenge Mr Solheim was facing to facilitate negotiations. The sources said the possibility of the Government agreeing to an informal truce had not been ruled out, though the tigers were insisting on an official ceasefire. Mr Solheim, accompanied by Norwegian Ambassador John Westborg is scheduled to fly to Vavuniya this afternoon and then will cross over to wanni, the LTTE headquarters. He is expected to return tomorrow afternoon, Norwegian Embassy sources indicated. Yesterday, Mr Solheim had a 45-minute discussion with Mr Hakeem, who stressed the need for both the Government and the LTTE to act with great responsibility and sincerity during the peace talks. Mr Hakeem pledged the SLMC’s support towards the success of the negotiations. He also expressed the need to include the SLMC in the Governments team at the negotiating table. Mr Solheim had met LTTE’s chief negotiator Anton Balasingham in London last week. During talks, the TULF had conveyed that the two parties should evolve some formula to enable the parties to come to talks. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar had also written to his Norwegian counterpart saying Sri Lankan extends its fullest support to the Norwegian peace initiative and requested Norway to take "such initiatives as might be required for the purpose". But analysts pointed out that the Government was compelled to seek early peace talks with the rebels in the light of the military debacle in the Jaffna peninsula last month in which more than 500 people were killed and 200 were injured. (UNI) |
|
After interactions with US, Russia, now is China’s turn NEW DELHI, May 16: Close on the heels of India’s high-level interaction with US and Russia, the stage is now set for intensive parleys here tomorrow with top ranking Chinese politburo member Li Changchun. Li will hold talks with External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh on the entire gamut of bilateral relations besides international and regional issues of mutual concern. The Bush administration’s new strategic security policy is likely to figure during the parleys. India has welcomed Washington’s announcement of unilateral reductions of its nuclear weapons and moving away from hair-trigger alerts. Li’s week-long visit will take him to Mumbai, Hyderabad and Agra before his official parleys here. He will be accompanied by a delegation comprising senior officials of the Communist Party of China and from Guangdong province. Li’s visit is part of the process of high-level political exchanges between India and China in recent years. During President K R Narayanan’s visit in May last year and the visit of senior Chinese leader and former Premier Li Peng to India in January this year, the two sides had agreed that regular high-level exchanges would contribute positively to the development of bilateral relations. Taking forward the momentum of Sino-India ties, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan had visited India in July last year when the two countries reaffirmed the desire to develop bilateral relations in all areas. New Delhi looked forward to the further development of Sino-India relations during Li’s visit taking place at the invitation of Singh, officials said. India, they said, was committed to maintain friendly, cooperative and good neighbourly relations with China on the basis of panchsheel and mutual sensitivity to each other’s concerns.(PTI) |
|
|
|
|
