Comment & Briefs

If anybody thought that a change of talk in the Bush administration’s Iran policy would be enough to induce the “isolated” Tehran to give up its intransigence and toe the western line, the July 19 meeting proved him or her wrong. Before the Geneva meeting between Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the US sent feelers to Tehran.

The three day International Islamic Conference on Inter-faith Dialogue (also known as World Dialogue Conference) organised by the Saudi Arabia based World Muslim League (WML) was held in Madrid from July 16 to 18, 2008. Touted to be the brainchild of Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the conference was attended by around 300 religious leaders and scholars from across the world representing Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism and other religions.

The spate of talks and meetings between India and Bangladesh is unmatched in recent times. This pace alone sets bilateral relations apart from the five long years when the BNP-led coalition government was in power (2000-05) in Bangladesh. The recent (July 17, 2008) Foreign Secretary level talks have once again brought home the fact of how the interim government in Bangladesh without having to pander to any particular constituency has been able to constructively engage with its largest neighbour.

While addressing the customary press conference after the Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan on July 21, 2008, the Indian Foreign Secretary stated that the India-Pakistan dialogue is “under stress” and Pakistan must address New Delhi’s concerns about cross-border terrorism. The talks were held in the shadow of the recent attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, which, India alleges, had the involvement of “elements in Pakistan”. The Indian Foreign Secretary also admitted that the ongoing ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir has come under strain.

Nagaland has been up in flames for quite sometime now. For the past eight months or so, heavy inter-factional killings between the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah [NSCN (IM)], the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang [NSCN (K)], and the newly formed National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Unification [NSCN (U)], have been vitiating the atmosphere there. On July 9, clashes between the NSCN (IM) and the NSCN (U) in Diphupar village led to the death of a few insurgents.

The July 7 attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul which left 58 people dead including four Indians and more than 140 wounded was a highly provocative act. Those responsible for the attack are well known, and their objectives are also not a matter of speculation. It is understood that the Indian government should be taking far more stringent security measures to minimise the recurrence of such attacks on its embassy, consulates, and reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.

In many ways the story of Punjab is anomalous to the stylized facts of civil war literature. Empirical literature on civil wars points to a negative correlation between income and likelihood of conflict. There is also cross-country evidence to suggest that rough terrain contributes to greater possibility of violence. Both these facts did not hold in the case of Punjab. However, recent research on terrorism supports the view that terrorism is not correlated with poverty and lower education levels.

Ordnance Factories constitute a major segment of India’s defence industrial set- up, whose other constituents are the Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and varied Service-specific workshops, repair and maintenance establishments. The gross production of ordnance factories during the year 2005-06 was Rs. 8811.59 crores. Total sales including issues to armed forces and other agencies and civil trade in the same year was Rs. 6891.68 crores. This constitutes approximately 40 per cent of domestic supplies to the armed forces.

Now that the IAEA Draft Agreement is on the World Wide Web and the Communists have withdrawn their support to the UPA, it is reasonable to assume that the next few steps will also follow in good time. The alacrity with which the Americans have drafted their letter to the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is remarkable and shows that the Bush administration is indeed very keen to see the deal through before its term ends at the end of the year. What we are not so sure of, however, is the future of the UPA and the Congress.

The July 7 gruesome attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which resulted in the loss of over 40 lives including those of two senior diplomats, is clearly a high value symbolic attack directed at coercing India into scaling down its growing presence in rebuilding war ravaged Afghanistan. It is a clear reminder, following as it does a series of low and small scale attacks on Indians in previous months and years, that the Indian presence is continuing to hamper the interests of Pakistan which is bent upon regaining its lost ‘strategic depth’ in that country.