BRICS summit: How India failed to convince other nations on Pakistan

BRICS summit: How India failed to convince other nations on Pakistan

The Indian side, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his officials, pushed for the BRICSSummit Goa Declaration to specifically mention “cross-border terrorism” that India was faced with and also the names of Pakistani-based terror outfits. However, it failed to convince the other member states.

The Goa Declaration didn’t refer either to the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is headed by Masood Azhar, the man India believes was behind the Pathankot terrorist attack, or the Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Saeed is considered to be the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

It did, however, name such groups as the Islamic State, Jabat-al-Nasra, the Syrian Islamist rebel group, and other UN designated groups. Amar Sinha, India’s chief negotiator in the BRICS, said that India couldn’t get a consensus on naming Pakistan-based terrorist outfits since it doesn’t concern all the BRICS countries.

Later, Islamabad criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement where he called Pakistan “the mothership of terrorism”. Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that Modi’s statement was misleading and a desperate attempt to hide India’s brutalities in Kashmir. “Pakistan joins all the members of BRICS and BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) in condemning terrorism and reaffirms its full commitment to fight the menace of terrorism,” Aziz said.Read more.

PM Modi to meet Chinese president; will attempt to win support for NSG membership

PM Modi to meet Chinese president; will attempt to win support for NSG membership

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday in the Uzbekistan capital Tashkent in an attempt to win Beijing's support for India's membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Modi will be meeting President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit meeting that is currently on in Tashkent. The SCO is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Highly placed sources said that the meeting between PM Modi and President Xi Jinping would be an exclusive one-on-one discussion, where the top agenda would be to seek China's support for India's membership in the NSG.

China, till now, has been playing the role of a dampener on the issue of clearing the way for India's admission to the NSG, by repeatedly stating that it is not on the agenda of the grouping which began its plenary session in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday.

On the other hand, the United States has called on the participating governments of the NSG to support India's application for membership.

State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in a press briefing that Washington has not changed its stand regarding India's application for membership to the elite group. Read more.