Diplomacy

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Friday met Italian Members of Parliament and agreed to work together to realise the full potential of India and Italy’s partnership.

The move allows India to transfer technology to Bangladesh for building warships. To achieve this, India’s state-owned Garden Reach Ship Builders will work closely with the Khulna Shipyard Limited in Bangladesh.

The two countries signed the agreements for providing Lines of Credit for $170 million for strengthening drinking water supply of Grand Conakry, and $20.22 million for two solar projects, and also for supply of electricity and drinking water for seven public universities and solar project for electrification and refrigeration in 200 health centres.

India’s participation in the just concluded maiden defence and security exhibition in Tokyo, where it was one of the few nations to have a booth, is an indicator of the increasing focus on this sector. Also, the recent past has seen bilateral military exercises — the ‘Dharma Guardian-2019’ (between the Indian Army and Japanese Ground Self Defence Forces), the ‘SHINYUU Maitri-2019’ (between Japanese Air Self Defence Force and the Indian Air Force) — and also the trilateral Malabar exercise by India, Japan and the US.

Just like Arunachal Pradesh, India has also lured Russia to invest in Ladakh, and the Russian investors have also reciprocated by showing interest when it comes to investing in the newly carved out Union Territory. This development is also irksome for Beijing, as any integrational move in Ladakh directly militates against, and threatens China’s illegal occupation of ‘Aksai Chin’.

This will be the 22nd round of boundary talks between the two countries. The previous talks between Doval and Wang — who are the designated Special Representatives (SRs) for the boundary talks — were held at Chengdu in China in November last year.

India will be building a cancer hospital and a cricket stadium in the Maldives. This was announced by PM Modi during his video conference with Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih when four projects were inaugurated by India in the island nation.

In a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said the Pakistan foreign minister announced a decision to establish “Kashmir cell/desks” in Pakistan’s Foreign Office and Missions abroad.
“The main objective of these cells/desks is to incite local populations and to radicalise them through false propaganda,” he said.

With the launch of RuPay card, Maldives will join the growing list of countries–Singapore, Bhutan, UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia where RuPay is acceptable.

This year’s edition of the talks, popularly known as the 2+2 dialogue, assume additional significance as they come months after India, Australia, Japan and the US decided to upgrade their interactions in the “Quadrilateral” format to the ministerial level in September.