Skip to main content

BIMSTEC summit a building block for "forward march of Asia".

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will on Tuesday meet with Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa for the first time since 2012, on what will likely be his last official foreign visit, a two-day summit of leaders of the seven nations participating in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, BIMSTEC.

The meeting comes just days ahead of a scheduled vote on a resolution calling for an international enquiry into alleged Sri Lankan war crimes at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Dr. Singh had declined to travel to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, amidst intense criticism of the country’s human rights record.

Tamil Nadu politicians have criticised the meeting, with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader K. Karunanidhi writing in a party journal that while Tamils were “seeking a resolution for an independent probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka, Singh is holding talks with Rajapaksa, ignoring sentiments of Tamils”.

Khurshid slams critics:

India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid responded sharply to the criticism, saying “we engage specifically for the welfare of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and in protecting their welfare and interests”.

“I think someone should ask the 50,000 Tamil families in the Northern Province who have got Indian-built homes what they think of our engagement. I doubt very much that they would want us to cut off contact with Sri Lanka, leaving them with no livelihoods and their children without schools”.

Indian diplomatic sources offered few details of the agenda for the Singh-Rajapaksa meeting, other than saying that all issues between the two countries would be discussed. They also offered no indication on how India would vote on the resolution, saying a draft had yet to be firmed up.

Key meetings:

Dr. Singh began his meetings with key regional leaders on Monday, holding talks with Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Sushil Koirala—who stirred comment among media in his country by choosing to travel on a scheduled flight, rather than the chartered aircraft used by other leaders.

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said Mr. Koirala had been “very forthright, very candid and very positive about India-Nepal relations”. The two Prime Ministers’ discussions, Mr. Khurshid said, focussed on Nepal’s constitution-building process, but also addressed infrastructure and economic cooperation.

Dr. Singh also met with Myanmar’s president, Thein Sen, and discussed the progress of bilateral measures to contain insurgent groups operating across the border. The two leaders also discussed work on the construction of an Indian-Myanmar-Thailand highway, and Indian involvement in Myanmar’s gasfields—the tenth-largest in the world.

In addition to Mr. Rajapaksa, the Prime Minister is also due to meet Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Lyonchhen Tshering Tobgay, and the eminent Myanmar political leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

BIMSTEC is an initiative involve countries linked along the rim of the Bay of Bengal, intended to enhance cooperation on connectivity, trade and investment, energy and climate issues.

“Peace, stability and development in BIMSTEC countries, with over 20% of the world’s population and over US$ 2.5 trillion worth of GDP, is indispensible for the forward march of Asia”, Dr. Singh said in a statement issued on Tuesday

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...
Post a Comment
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
2 comments
Click Here To Read more »