The defence expenditure (DE) announced today is Rs. 83,000 crores and this is a modest increase of Rs 6,000 crores or 7.7% over last year’s budgeted estimate (BE).
China has not issued any official statement on the recently concluded elections in Iraq. However, in a Press Conference on February1, 2005, to a question on the elections, the Foreign Ministry Spokesman Kong Quan said that:
While cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and multiple insurgencies in the Northeast remain the focus of India’s internal security planning, left-wing extremism (LWE) is gradually becoming another major source of concern. An assessment of the developments during the current year reveals their continuously expanding sphere of violence — both in terms of scale and intensity.
A permanent seat in the United Nations (UN) Security Council seems well within India’s grasp. India’s long held aspirations of playing a more active role in the global affairs by acquiring a permanent seat at the UN Security Council has received a significant boost by the report submitted by the Secretary general’s high-level panel on threats, challenges and change.
The tsunami tragedy that struck large parts of Southern Asia abutting the Bay of Bengal and the South Eastern Indian Ocean littoral has been a tragic start for the New Year. It is feared that the total death toll in the affected areas may well cross the 200,000 mark. In many ways this is a multi-national disaster with the affected countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar amongst others and stretching all the away across the ocean to the East coast of Africa.
The Southeast Asian states are critically dependent on regional sea-lanes for trade since most of them have embarked on the philosophy of export-led development. These are also the energy lifelines of the East Asian states and are equally vital for global trade. The Malacca Straits and Singapore Straits enclose the busiest of these sea-lanes, through which about a quarter of the world trade passes each year aboard 50,000 vessels.
The intense media interest and the more modest outcome of what ultimately transpired after the just concluded visit of the Pakistani PM Mr. Shaukat Aziz to New Delhi is in many ways indicative of the tone and texture of Indo-Pak relations at the present moment. While the two nations have had a relationship of varying degrees of hostility and bitterness since October 1947, the agreement reached in January 2004 over the Composite Dialogue Process (CDP) is the framework in which bi-lateral ties are now being pursued.
Defence outlay-modest increase but shades of gray
The defence expenditure (DE) announced today is Rs. 83,000 crores and this is a modest increase of Rs 6,000 crores or 7.7% over last year’s budgeted estimate (BE).