Kabul/New Delhi, Aug 10,2021: As the Taliban intensified their attacks on Mazar-e-Sharif, India on Tuesday began evacuating its nationals, including diplomats and staff of the consulate, from the northern Afghanistan city as a matter of caution.
The Indian Embassy in Kabul also asked members of the Indian media arriving or staying in Afghanistan to contact the Embassy security wing for a personalized briefing, including advice on the locations they are planning to travel to.
“This will help media persons make a better assessment of the risks involved, given the rapid changes in the security situation taking place in different parts of the country,” the Embassy said in an advisory.
In the advisory, the Embassy asked Indian nationals to “make immediate travel arrangements to return to India”.
Earlier last month, India had evacuated its staff from the Consulate in Kandahar in the wake of the Taliban attack on the city.
The Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif on Tuesday tweeted that it has arranged a special flight to evacuate its citizens from the city.
In a series of tweets, the Consulate urged Indian citizens to contact the Indian mission.
It said that a special flight is leaving from Mazar-e-Sharif to New Delhi.
United Nations, Aug 5,Aug 2021: UN Secretary-General welcomed the appointment by the ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of Brunei’s Second Minister of Foreign Affairs as Special Envoy on Myanmar, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“The Secretary-General welcomes the appointment of Mr. Erywan Yusof, Second Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brunei Darussalam as Special Envoy of the ASEAN Chair on Myanmar,” Dujarric said on Wednesday. “The United Nations looks forward to continuing its cooperation with ASEAN on a coherent response to the crisis in Myanmar.”
Guterres renewed his call on Myanmar’s military to respect the will of people and refrain from violence and repression, Dujarric said.
The UN chief also called to ensure full and unimpeded access to those in need of humanitarian assistance throughout the country.
“The United Nations is focusing its efforts, in cooperation with international and regional partners, notably ASEAN, to provide humanitarian and life-saving assistance,” Dujarric added.
On February 1, Myanmar’s military overthrew the civilian government and declared a year-long state of emergency. The United Nations estimates that at least 930 civilians have been killed by the country’s security forces since the coup.
Washington DC [US], July 15,2021: US State Secretary Antony Blinken and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called for joint US-European efforts to stand up to Russia and China, US State Department has said.
A State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Thursday the meeting took place on Wednesday in Washington.
“They agreed on the need for joint US-European efforts to stand up to Russian aggression and to address the People’s Republic of China’s human rights abuses, coercive trade practices, and aggressive foreign policy,” Price said.
They also reviewed ongoing efforts to return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA. The officials also discussed the situation around the recent assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, as well as France’s troop reconfiguration in the Sahel region of western Africa and the situation in Lebanon.
“The Secretary and Foreign Minister discussed how to build on 60 years of close partnership in space. The Secretary invited France to join the United States in applying longstanding principles for the peaceful uses of outer space to advance safe and responsible space exploration activities on the moon and Mars through the Artemis Accords,” the statement said.
Secretary Blinken further welcomed France’s Villa Albertine initiative, which will establish French cultural centres throughout the United States, strengthening our close ties and sense of shared values, it added.
Washington, Jul 13,2021: The strategic dialogue between Moscow and Washington has to aim to develop a new “security equation” that will include all types of weapons, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov has said.
“Our starting point is that the goal of the strategic dialogue should be development of a new ‘security equation,’ which takes into account every important factor. Such ‘equation’ should cover all offensive and defensive weapons, both nuclear and conventional, that are capable of solving strategic tasks,” Antonov told Russian-speaking students of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
New Delhi/Dushanbe, Jul 12,2021: Foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) began arriving in the Tajik capital Dushanbe for meetings that would focus on the situation in Afghanistan in the wake of the US pullout and the Taliban taking control of more territories.
Tajikistan is chair of the eight-nation grouping this year that comprises Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan.
Beside the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting Tuesday, the grouping’s top diplomats are also scheduled to attend the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group meeting.
They will exchange views among them and their Afghan counterpart on promoting regional security and stability, advancing the process of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, and deepening cooperation between the SCO and Afghanistan.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will participate in the confabulations.
The ministers at their July 13-14 engagement will also consider a draft plan of joint action to facilitate Afghanistan’s social and economic reconstruction, said Russia’s Special Presidential Envoy for SCO Affairs Bakhtiyer Khakimov.
“Within the SCO framework, we plan to discuss another initiative put forward by Uzbekistan, which is a draft plan of joint action to help Afghanistan’s social and economic reconstruction,” Khakimov told TASS.
“We believe that such a document should be worked out by all the ministries and agencies concerned and approved, for instance, at the level of heads of government. It is crucial to draft a serious and solid document,” said the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador at Large.
Khakimov pointed out that the SCO countries have multiple economic projects for cooperation with Afghanistan and are currently discussing ideas of how to rebuild old infrastructure.
He drew attention to the fact that about 160 facilities were built in Afghanistan with the assistance of the erstwhile Soviet Union, most of which were operational at the time of the Soviet troops’ withdrawal from the country.
“Now there are ideas to reconstruct and develop them. Taking into regard that a variety of bilateral projects are being implemented by Russia, China, India, Uzbekistan and other SCO countries, why not put them under the SCO auspices?” Khakimov added.
The Dushanbe meeting will consider several important documents for subsequent adoption in the SCO Council of Heads of State in September this year.
Moscow, Jul 11,2021: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Maj. Gen. Babar Iftikhar says Pakistan has been working on strengthening security at the border with Afghanistan amid foreign troops withdrawal.
“Right now, 90 per cent of the Pak-Afghan border has been fenced,” Iftikhar said in an interview with ARY News on Saturday, as quoted by the Dawn newspaper. He added that Pakistan is “very well prepared” and the current border security mechanism is “much better.”
According to Iftikhar, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry is prepared for a possible influx of refugees from Afghanistan.
The foreign troops withdrawal from Afghanistan, almost complete on the American side ahead of the September 11 deadline, is widely feared to bring about a humanitarian crisis in the country and cause waves of refugees to flee to the neighboring states.
Tasnim Aslam, a former Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told Sputnik on Wednesday that Pakistan is concerned that extremists may hide among refugees coming from Afghanistan and spread uncontrollably across the region with migrant flows. She also said that the instability in the country will allow drug trafficking to flourish, as various groups inside Afghanistan will increasingly rely on the drug trade to fund their operations.
In view of this, Aslam urged regional partners to strengthen border protection, as, she added, under US “occupation,” Afghanistan’s drug production only increased.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in contact with the leaders of Central Asian countries on the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
Washington [US], July 7,2021: The United States will continue discussing supporting operations with countries neighboring Afghanistan after the pullout, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters in a press briefing on Tuesday.
“As you saw we had conversations last week with the foreign ministers of both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan who also met with the State Department as well,” Kirby said.
“I won’t detail the specifics of those conversations, but clearly we are and continue to have conversations with leaders in neighboring nations, about the kinds of possibilities for support that they can offer, with respect to a range of over the horizon capabilities we want to be able to, to bring to bear in our support to the Afghan forces.”
New Delhi, Jun 29,2021: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has not met any Taliban leader as claimed by some media reports, sources said here on Tuesday.
As per the reports which are circulating in social media, Dr Jaishankar had met Taliban leaders Mullah Baradar, Khairullah, Sheikh Dilawar and have assured that future relations with India will not be governed by Pakistan’s will.
“We have seen some reports on social media which claim that the External Affairs Minister has met some Taliban leaders. Such reports are completely untrue, baseless and mischievous,” the sources said.
Dr Jaishankar had visited Doha on June 9 and June 15 where he had met with the Qatari Foreign Minister and the National Security Advisor, as well as US Special Representative on Afghanistan reconciliation.
The fast pace developments are taking place against the backdrop of the US President Joe Biden announcing the withdrawal of American troops from the war-torn Afghanistan on September 11, almost 20 years after it attacked the country to eliminate militant organisation Al Qaeda and overthrow Taliban.
The Taliban, which has rejected to recognise the democratically elected Afghanistan government is becoming stronger day-by-day by attacking the Afghanistan forces and now rules over many districts of the country.
The Indian government has so far not recognised the Taliban.
Taliban’s main office is located in Doha since 2013. The Qatar government has organised Intra Afghan Dialogue or Afghan-Taliban talks in September last year which was attended by an Indian delegation led by MEA’s Joint Secretary for Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan J P Singh.
April 15,2021: A Turkish delegation will visit Egypt next month as part of Ankara’s efforts to mend ties with Cairo after the two countries snapped diplomatic relations in 2013, the foreign minister said on Thursday.
“Egypt invited a delegation from Turkey. The delegation will go in early May,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the private NTV broadcaster.
“We will discuss openly how to normalise relations.”
Cavusoglu on Thursday said the first delegation talks would be at the level of deputy foreign ministers, before a meeting between the ministers.
“I hope we will all together further improve relations,” he said.
Thaw in relations
Ankara and Cairo froze ties after the 2013 overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, who forged close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
That year, both countries expelled each others’ ambassadors and Cairo had then declared the Turkish envoy “persona non grata”.
But Turkish officials last month said Ankara had established the first diplomatic contacts with Cairo since 2013 as part of wider efforts to repair relations with other Middle Eastern rivals.
Cavusoglu’s announcement comes a day after he said a new period was beginning in Turkey-Egypt ties.
Washington, Apr 8,2021: The United States is ready to lift sanctions imposed on Iran so as to resume mutual compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement, said State Department spokesman Ned Price.
In a press briefing on Wednesday Price said
“We are prepared to lift sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action],”
Price made it clear that there will be no unilateral gestures from the US side as it favors a “compliance for compliance” formula.
Currently a US delegation is attending an in-person meeting by the JCPOA members in Austria to discuss steps needed to fully restore the nuclear agreement.
The US representatives had meetings with counterparts from France, Germany, Russia, China and the United Kingdom, but are not expected to engage in direct talks with Iran’s team.
In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with the P5+1 group of countries. The agreement required Iran to scale back its nuclear program and downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, the US withdrew from the JCPOA and started imposing sanctions on Iran.
New Delhi, March 23,2021: A delegation from Pakistan reached New Delhi on Monday to hold talks with India under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT), after a gap of over two years.
The treaty warrants the two sides to meet once a year, alternately in India and Pakistan. However, the last year’s meeting scheduled to be held in New Delhi was cancelled in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This will be an important meeting. We will engage with India in accordance with the Indus Water treaty. We are hopeful regarding this meeting,” Mehran Ali Shah, Pakistan Commissioner for Indus Waters told ANI.
During the talks, Islamabad is likely to raise objections to power projects on the Chenab River, Dawn reported.
The Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) is a bilateral commission of officials from India and Pakistan, created to implement and manage goals of the Indus Waters Treaty 1960, brokered by the World Bank. It comprises the Indus Commissioners from both sides and discusses technical matters related to the implementation of the treaty.
The last India-Pakistan PIC was held in Lahore, Pakistan in August 2018. The Indian delegation was led by PK Saxena, the Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters.
The Indus Waters Treaty was signed between then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and former Pakistan President Ayub Khan in 1960.
The treaty sets out a mechanism for cooperation and information exchange between the two countries regarding their use of the rivers, known as the Permanent Indus Commission which includes a commissioner from each of the two countries. It also sets out a process for resolving so-called “questions”, “differences” and “disputes” that may arise between the parties.
India and Pakistan have engaged in a long outstanding water dispute over two hydroelectric projects.
Pakistan has raised objection to the building of the Kishanganga (330 megawatts) and Ratle (850 megawatts) hydroelectric plants by India, saying that it violates the provisions of the treaty. India insists on its right to build these projects and hold that their design is fully in compliance with the guidelines of the treaty.
The World Bank had asked both the countries to consider alternative ways to resolve their disagreements over the Indus Water Treaty Dispute 1960.
New Delhi, Feb 18 ,2021: The third India-Australia-Japan-US ministerial meeting will take place February 18, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.
“The 3rd India-Australia-Japan-USA Ministerial Meeting will be held on 18 February 2021 with participation of the respective Foreign Ministers. The meeting will provide an opportunity to continue the useful exchange of views from their last meeting in Tokyo on October 6, 2020,” the MEA said in a statement.
“The Ministers will exchange views on regional and global issues, especially practical areas of cooperation towards maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. They will also discuss ongoing efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing global climate change and other issues of mutual interest,” it said.
Washington DC [US], January 30 ,2021: The Biden administration is prioritizing dealing with Iran’s progress towards achieving a nuclear weapon, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Friday.
“From our perspective, a critical early priority has to be to deal with what is an escalating nuclear crisis as they move closer and closer to having enough fissile material for a weapon,” Sullivan said during a virtual panel discussion hosted by the US Institute of Peace.
The Biden administration would like to reestablish some of the constraints on Iran’s nuclear program that have fallen apart over the past two years, Sullivan said.
President Joe Biden has vowed to renter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) after his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the accord and pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
The agreement constrained Iranian nuclear activities in return for easing of sanctions.
New Delhi , January 25,2021: The ninth round of Corps Commander Level talks between India and China ended at 2:30 am on Monday.
The meeting lasted for more than 15 hours after starting at 11 am on Sunday at Moldo opposite Chushul in the Eastern Ladakh sector to address the ongoing military standoff.
The two countries have been engaged in a stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) since April-May last year. While China began amassing massive military strength along the LAC, India responded with a befitting build-up.
Multiple rounds of talks have failed to yield any significant result in defusing border tensions. The last round of Corps Commander-level talks between both countries were held on November 6, 2020 in Chushul in Eastern Ladakh.
On August 29-30, India occupied heights along the northern and southern bank of the Pangong Lake which includes dominating positions overlooking the Chinese military deployed in that area.
The Chinese have been asking India to withdraw troops and tanks first from the southern bank but India has been asking for disengagement from all the friction points.