India(CAI) Karachi(KCA) Agree On Cotton Trade

KARACHI PAKISTAN News: Cotton Association of India (CAI) and Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) have reached an agreement to abolish all existing barriers in way of cotton trade between two neighbours.

President CAI Dheran N Seth visited KCA here on Saturday wherein he called on President KCA Sohail Naseem.

During the sitting, the heads of two cotton associations resolved to mutually resolve disputed issues instead of taking them up before International Cotton Advisory (ICA).

The meeting also decided to hold visits of members cotton associations from two sides on regular basis.

India Says Open to New Talks with Pak

NEW DELHI : India signalled on Friday it was open to a new round of talks with Pakistan, raising fresh hopes of a thaw in relations after last month’s official dialogue between the nuclear-armed rivals produced no breakthrough.

The two nations’ top diplomats — their foreign secretaries — met in New Delhi for their first official talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but just agreed to “keep in touch” without mentioning if there would be another round of talks.

What followed the meeting was a bout of acrimonious exchanges between the two sides over what the focus of the dialogue was — India on terrorism, Pakistan on the disputed region of Kashmir — worsening the atmosphere for any future talks.

“We tried to make a beginning with the foreign secretary talks, but nothing came out of it am afraid,” India’s Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told a conference in New Delhi.

“But I am told we are still open to another round of talks between the foreign secretaries.”

An easing of tension between the neighbours is important for stability in Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan have long battled for influence, complicating efforts by the United States to defeat militancy in the region.

Talks with Pak First Step “to Restore Confidence: India

NEW DELHI : Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said on Thursday that the first official talks with Pakistan in 14 months had marked a ‘first step’ towards rebuilding trust between the two neighbours.

“We had set out to take a first step towards rebuilding trust and I believe my meeting with the Pakistan foreign secretary constituted that first step,” Rao told reporters after talks with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir.

“We have agreed to remain in touch,” she added.

Pak, India Foreign Secretaries Hold Talks

NEW DELHI : Pakistan and India held their first foreign secretary-level talks at Hyderabad House in Indian capital on Thursday.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir and his Indian counterpart Nirupama Rao met one-on-one in New Delhi for nearly 90 minutes, before being joined for further discussions by their delegations.

The two foreign secretaries, the most senior civil servants in their foreign ministries, shook hands as they met at Hyderabad House, a former princely palace in the heart of the Indian capital.

“I look forward to our talks,” Rao told reporters, while Bashir said he hoped for “a very good, constructive engagement.”

Top leaders from both countries have since met several times during regional conferences, but Thursday’s meeting marks the first real move towards normalisation.

Bashir met with senior Kashmiri leaders on Wednesday, signalling Islamabad’s intention of keeping Kashmir on the talks agenda.

Indo-Pakistan F-S Talks Begin

NEW DELHI: The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met Thursday in New Delhi for the first official talks between the rivals since the 2008 Mumbai attacks which derailed their peace dialogue.

The Pakistani delegation, comprising eight members, is headed by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir.

Earlier, talking to media before the commencement of talks, Salman Bashir said all longstanding issues including Kashmir Row, Terrorism, Water Distribution, Insurgency in Balochistan and others will come under discussion.

He said terrorism is an international menace, which needs to be encountered at all levels.

The spokesman to Foreign Office Abdul Basit, on the occasion, said no agenda has been set for the talks therefore every issues will be discussed.

He said we are going to hold talks with a positive approach, adding that Pakistan has shown seriousness in taking concrete actions against accused of Mumbai attacks.

Later, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao shook hands with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir at a former princely palace in the centre of the Indian capital.

“I welcome the foreign secretary of Pakistan Salman Bashir to New Delhi this morning and I look forward to our talks,” Rao told reporters.

India broke off a slow-moving peace process with Pakistan after the attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, which left 166 people dead. New Delhi blamed militants based in Pakistan.

Bashir said he looked forward “to a very good, constructive engagement”.

Pak, India Resume Peace Talks Today

NEW DELHI : The foreign secretary level talks between Pakistan and India will begin on Thursday in Indian capital New Delhi.

The Pakistani delegation would be led by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir while Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao would lead the Indian delegation.

According to diplomatic sources, the talks between the foreign secretaries of two countries would be held to improve relation between the two countries and Pakistan would focus on the restoration of Composite Dialogue Process.

“We want to discuss and resolve all disputes with India,’ Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said on Wednesday in Lahore as he prepared to head to New Delhi to meet his counterpart, Nirupama Rao.

Meanwhile India wants the talks to focus on complaints that Pakistan has not done enough to crack down on militant groups who have carried out attacks here, especially those behind the November 2008 siege of Mumbai as S.M. Krishna, the India’s foreign minister, told NDTV news channel last week that “Our core concern is going to be terror,

Indian officials, unsatisfied with Pakistan’s efforts against militants, have been careful to say the meeting on Thursday does not represent a resumption of a full-scale peace process, where as Pakistan is calling for wide-ranging negotiations that will focus on long-standing issues, including the conflict in disputed Kashmir and tensions over their shared water sources.

The talks are a political risk for New Delhi because the public does not trust Pakistan. However, the government does not want to write off diplomacy and wants to keep tensions low between the countries. “It’s an act of statesmanship on the part of the government,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, a history professor at the University of Delhi.

The United States, which is intent on eliminating all distractions from Pakistan’s fight against militants along its frontier with Afghanistan, has been pushing for a resumption of the talks. Washington was dismayed when both India and Pakistan mobilised their troops to their shared border in the aftermath of the Mumbai attack, in which 10 Pakistan-based gunmen terrorised India’s financial capital in a 60-hour rampage that killed 166 people. India froze comprehensive talks after the attack.

The US hopes that a reduction in tensions would help Pakistan shift its focus from the Indian border to the offensive against Taliban militants in its north-west. Moonis Ahmar, chairman of the International Relations department at the University of Karachi, said the talks were mainly intended to show the world that the two countries were trying to re-establish normal relations.

“I don’t think there are high expectations on either side,’ he said. In a sign of the daily tensions that still confront the two neighbours, a gunbattle Wednesday between Indian forces and suspected Muslim insurgents in Indian Kashmir killed three soldiers and three suspected rebels, even as firing from across the border injured an Indian soldier, officials said.

India accuses Pakistan of training militants in the disputed region, which both countries lay claim to. Pakistan disputes that. The region lies at the heart of much of the tension between the countries.

New Delhi has also demanded Pakistan crack down on those behind the Mumbai attack and other violence against India as a precondition for restarting serious peace talks. While Pakistan is trying seven men on charges they planned and carried out the Mumbai attacks, the militant network blamed for the assault continues to operate relatively freely in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

In a speech in London this week, Rao said Pakistan must first take effective action against groups calling for jihad against India and “act decisively to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on its territory.’ At the same time, Indian officials have worked to keep tensions low. One day after the talks were announced two weeks ago, a package bomb killed 15 people at a cafe in the Indian city of Pune in the first major attack here since the Mumbai

Despite accusations from the opposition that Pakistani militants were involved, the government has refused to point fingers, saying the investigation is ongoing. Both sides hope the meeting will at least lead to further discussions between the two nations. “We want the process of engagement to continue,’ said Bashir, the Pakistani foreign secretary.

India May Lose Rights to Host World Cup 2011

Latest News Cricket News: New Zealand Cricket Board has warned India that Cricket World Cup 2011 venue could be shifted to Australia-New Zealand. The warning has been issued due to the alarming security situation prevailing in the entire sub continent.

New Zealand Cricket Board Chief Executive Justin Wan said security situation in the entire subcontinent is of great concern to the ICC, thus Australia-New Zealand may be given the rights to host the World Cup 2011. He also said that New Zealand tour to India would clarify the situation of security in India.

India, China Resisting Request to Back Climate Pact

latest news updates: India and China are resisting requests to sign up for the Copenhagen Accord for fighting global warming that risks unravelling without clear support from major emitters.

The two have not publicly spelt out if they want to be listed among “associates” of the Accord, announced after a meeting of leaders of emerging economies and the United States during a U.N. summit in Copenhagen in December.

“This point is still under consideration,” an Indian official said on Friday. Indian officials said the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat wrote a letter to New Delhi asking for a clarification of its views, “preferably” by Feb. 10.

Like New Delhi, Beijing has expressed support for the Accord but stopped short of saying if it wants to be “associated”. Associates will be listed at the top of the three-page text.

“There is no agreement on what are the implications of these terminologies and language,” an Indian official said.

The accord may fall apart without them. The United States has said it is willing to be “associated” only if developed nations and “more advanced” developing nations also sign up. So far, about 80 of the 194 U.N. members have agreed.

The Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, and holds out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020, with $10 billion a year from 2010-12.

Developing nations fear that endorsing the Copenhagen Accord too strongly could undermine the 1992 U.N. Climate Convention, which says that developed nations must take the lead in slowing climate changes, from desertification to rising sea levels.

South Africa and Brazil, forming the BASIC group with China and India, have expressed willingness to be associated after letters asking for clarification from the U.N. Secretariat.

“We did (receive a U.N. letter) and replied in the affirmative, as did Brazil,” said Alf Wills, a deputy director at South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs.

Lavanya Rajamani, an expert in environmental law at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, said emerging nations were “keen to signal a desire to focus energies on the (U.N.) process.”

“And that is another reason why I expect India is cautious about associating formally with the accord,” she said. “Although the Copenhagen Accord is not a legally binding document, it does have considerable political gravitas.”

The request for countries to be associated came up only in the final hours of the Copenhagen talks after it was clear that developing nations including Sudan and Cuba opposed it. The conference ended up merely “noting” the accord.

A spokesman for British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, who in Copenhagen was among those who suggested listing backers, said that aid to developing nations would not be limited to “associates”.

“Signing the accord is not a condition for fast-start money,” he said.

One solution could be to fudge the semantics and include China and India by listing countries that have either expressed support or willingness to be associated.

Big emerging economies “are trying to have their cake and eat it too. You can let them do that, and still continue the approach that they’re supporting it,” a senior negotiator from a developed country said.

India, Pak Talks Will be Held as Per Schedule: Krishna

News Delhi: Indian external affairs minister S M Krishna on Sunday said that despite Pune blast, the dialogue between India and Pakistan would hold according to schedule.

While talking to media in Tamilnadu, Krishna declined to comment on Pune bomb blast adding that he said “Let us wait for the report of the investigative agencies first”.

Krishna refuse to comment on the question regarding involvement of Pakistan in Pune blast.

Indo-Pakistan Foreign Secretaries To Meet Feb 25

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan News: Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India will meet on February 25 in New Delhi.

The decision was taken in a meeting held in Prime Minister House here on Friday. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chaired the meeting that reviewed Pak- India dialogues, water, Kashmir and other issues and chalked out the strategy.

The meeting has decided that Pakistan will raise all key issues during the talks and urged resumption of composite talks. Prime Minister has directed the foreign secretary to make negotiations fruitful.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, chairman Kashmir Committee Maulana Fazlur Rehman and foreign secretary Salman Bashir attended the meeting.

Next Page »