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It is President Barak Obama's political requirement to have a calm Middle East so that he can keep a steady gaze on Afghanistan, the country on which the NATO Summit in Chicago must focus in May in ways that it is useful for his re election in November.

For Russia and even Central Asian countries, China can act as a catalyst to market their hydrocarbon resources to South Asia and beyond, opening an opportunity for gas exports too. Russia's $400 billion gas deal with China is a case in point.

On a proposal by Vietnam recently, ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), the overseas investment arm of ONGC, has decided to stay invested in Block 128. The decision was taken after Hanoi offered to provide additional data to make future exploration economically feasible and discovering hydrocarbons commercially viable.

While President Barack Obama is pursuing his two-pronged approach in Afghanistan that involves talking to the Taliban and handling over the security to the Afghan National Army (ANA).

China has sometimes been cordial to sanction imposers depending on the issue-salience of the sanction, yet its posture towards international sanctions regimes remains cold, especially when they conflict with its national interests.

The pending Companies Bill provides for in an increase in the corporate funding to political parties from 5% to 7.5% of the average net profits. This increase is despite the fact that the presence of strong corporate funding laws has not hindered companies to squeeze out crores in bribes.

At a workshop on responsible corporate governance at Observer Research Foundation, it was noted that corporate governance and business responsibility are no longer add-ons to markets; they are integral to them.

There had always been a nexus between the Congress party and big business. After all, Mahatma Gandhi?s Ashram at Sevagram was financed by Jamnalal Bajaj; Gandhiji was assassinated in Birla House, New Delhi.

There is nothing more anti poetic than the image of Suresh Kalmadi and his alleged shananegans. Yet the mind, that strange instrument, moved mysteriously to Josh Malihabadi one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Though Myanmar's reforms are mostly'cosmetic' now, the changes can have unintended consequences, as witnessed in the case of Mikhail Gorbachev's Glasnost & Perestroika in the erstwhile Soviet Union, says Bertil Lintner, author of many books on Myanmar.

If Richard Nixon sought a breakthrough in China after failure in Vietnam, George Bush had a breakthrough with India after failure in Iraq, Barack Obama could work on a legacy that is a breakthrough with Iran after failure in Afghanistan.

Young Suryanarayana is a life that has been cut in its prime. He was the vic- tim of a bigoted doctrine taught in Pakistan for nearly three decades; for the Taliban are only another manifestation of the Islamist drive of General Zia-ul-Haq. The Indian died in a terrorist act after his abduc- tors demanded that all 2,500 Indians in Afghanistan vacate immediately. It was an absurd demand and no government would ever have agreed to it.

The Council of Councils Seventh Regional Conference brought together experts from 20 leading institutions from around the world to discuss and debate critical regional and global issues.

There is a need for governments to engage the private sector in counter-terrorism and counter-propaganda initiatives. Counter-terrorism doctrines and strategies have been framed in the last decade with a focus on religious extremism and have failed to encompass other ideas, feel cyber expers.

The outcome of the Third Plenary meeting of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China which ended on Wednesday in Beijing is like a typical iceberg -- you see some of it above the water, but most of it is below. The leadership knows well that if reforms of the financial sector and of creating a legal governance regime are delayed, the economic miracle could well turn into a nightmare.

If India wants strategic dividends from arms acquisitions, it must craft its acquisition policy in a prudent manner with the aim of bringing in knowledge that necessitates a higher degree of trust with the US. It should go beyond economics to factor in larger strategic considerations.

The former Governor of Chhattisgarh, Lt Gen (Retd) K M Seth, called for a national strategy and national level coordinated action plan to successfully deal with Naxalites of the CPI (Maoist). He was making a presentation on Naxalism in India, at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, on April 13, 2007.

If one looks at China's actions in the South China Sea over the past five years, the picture that emerges is of a rising China attempting to change the ground realities and destabilise the status quo. If the international community wait to see the end game of the Chinese strategy, it may be too late to de-escalate a military confrontation.

The Special Envoy for the Fourth Cyberspace Conference in Netherlands, Dr. Uri Rosenthal, says global efforts are required to help create "an open and secure internet that is an engine for growth and innovation and for the benefit of the people."

Like Chinese do now, India needs to create 'constituencies' in the neighbourhood that are not only sound but are also continuing. This is not to influence their decisions but to create institutional mechanisms that will be able to constantly update its knowledge and understanding of the existing and emerging situations.

Considering that films and books, creator's freedom and that of the Press are not existential questions for which ready answers could still be found, whether enforceable or not, the answers too have to be in the realm of pragmatism.

The fault lies not with the game or its practitioners. It is a delightful sport, capable of arousing emotions even in the most die-hard cynic of the game. It has spawned legends, created folk tales out of ordinary mortals. And unlike football, it has never been a cause of war between two nations. This time it could.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's invitation to Pakistani President and the Prime Minister has a special relevance for a number of reasons. And Dr. Singh definitely deserves kudos for pushing the envelope for Indo-Pak peace, in spite of not being on the strongest political wicket himself.

There was space in Pakistan for open discourse upto the Zia period. It is from Zia's Pakistan that poets like Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Ahmad Faraz began to leave for other countries. From London, Farigh Bukhari wailed: "God, forgive me: these days it seems that Islam was only for tyrants and murderers like Yazid"

Obama's warning to Putin that there would be costs for the invasion of Crimea was not only empty, but the real cost in all this was to American credibility, once again. One can, therefore, expect both the US and Russia to assert their rights regardless of international law.

The Observer Research Foundation, in partnership with the Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC), Naval Post-graduate School, California, USA, and the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Pakistan undertook a project, Crisis and Escalation in South Asia: The 2002 India-Pakistan Military Standoff....

The collapse of peace talks in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the latest blow for the mineral-rich east border zone with Rwanda and Uganda. The stalemate could re-ignite tensions not only with the rebels but also with Uganda which was trying to mediate an end to the conflict.

With Maldives again in the midst of political chaos, its former Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem says India can play a crucial role in taking the country out of the crisis by keeping a close watch on it and helping reform the judiciary to ensure that the Yameen administration does not kill off democracy.

The Mali crisis has attained added significance in view of the fact that many other African countries like Nigeria and Somalia are also facing the problem of terrorism. The weakness of the armed forces in most African nations encourages such rebel forces. This re-emphasises the urgent need for an efficient African Rapid Deployment Force.

In Nepal, the President is now in a better position to call for a national consensus government. He could give the parties one last chance but if the situation continues, he will be compelled to take drastic measures.

The issue of migrant workers was one of the important topics for discussion when the Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha visited Myanmar on his first official visit on 9-10 October.

Speaking at an interaction with visiting former diplomats from Pakistan, at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi, on April 7, 2005, Vice Admiral (Retired) K.K. Nayyar called for a complete "U-turn" in the policies of both India and Pakistan for normalising relations between the two neighbours.

The rise of China across a broad spectrum of power parameters is indisputable but the international community is concerned as to what kind of Beijing they will see in future. For one, given China's political culture and economic model, it is hard to see it emerging as the next US.

ICCR Director General Dr Suresh Goel says cultural diplomacy creates an additional space which softens the sharp edges of foreign policy, which is interest driven, thus fostering a favourable public opinion impacting foreign policy.

It has become fashionable to categorise Pakistan as a 'failed' state and paint a grim picture. The picture is far more complicated than this and there is more to the story than what we often hear.

Call it a discussion or debate or whatever, but the current European thinking on lending a religious identity to the emerging and expanded European Union may have a bearing on the evolving situation in India and the rest of the world. By referring to the ¿cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe¿ in the Preamble to the draft, Europeans may have begun defining and

Much of the internal conflict in Pakistan has centered on the question of national identity - what does it mean to be a Pakistani? This was the underlying theme of the round-table discussion on Current Events in Pakistan: Impact on Sindh and Balochistan organised by Observer Research Foundation on January 29 in New Delhi.

There is a consensus among intelligence officials, current and erstwhile, that the future challenges cannot be foreseen as they will emanate from the cyber world, space, the ocean, failed states and fundamentalism. The current intelligence system is woefully inadequate to meet these threats.

Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa¿s resignation on 7th May 2004 amidst mounting pressure from the agitating five political parties Nepali Congress (NC), Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), Jan Morcha (JM), Nepal Mazdoor Kishan Party (NMKP) and Nepali Sadhavana Party (Ananadi Devi) supported by the members of civil society has left a political vaccum in the country.

The history of the Planning Commission suggests that it was always an extension of the government's attitude towards the economy. This is not in itself a bad thing, but has been twisted an unfair criticism of the PC. Therefore, plans for the Niti Aayog and its working should be gauged very carefully.

The mass arrival of refugees could well cause the international community to contemplate a model where European troops take care of different sectors to keep the peace in the Mediterranean. But since European intervention will smack of re-colonisation, the ball will be tossed upto the UN Secretary General to devise a muscular UN Force.

One of the questions that neither the Bush administration nor the Musharraf government has so far investigated is the involvement of Pakistan's military in the proliferation activities of nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.