Modi-Pope connect in Vatican
VATICAN: On a crisp winter morning in Eternal City, a meeting of minds took place at the Papal place between the leader of the world’s largest democracy and the much-revered head of over 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. This meeting, away from the glare of G20 politicking in Rome, was scheduled to last only […]
India at G20: Smart diplomacy in a world on fire
ROME: In Eternal City, winter has set in, with radiant mornings and sun-filled cafes buzzing with chatter of casual conviviality after a long night of pandemic darkness. But behind that serene exterior, the world is burning, with a host of combustible issues such as aggravating global warming that can literally set the world on fire, […]
G20 in Rome: A weekend of high-wire global diplomacy
ROME: P for People, Planet and Prosperity – with this triple-P mantra, the G20 summit of the world’s wealthiest nations will kick off in Rome on October 30 for an extended weekend of high-wire diplomacy that will impinge on the future trajectory of the post-Covid world. Some heavy-hitters among the world leaders won’t be physically […]
With India on upswing, PM Modi heads to G20, climate summit
With India achieving the milestone of one billion vaccinations and India’s economy growing at a healthy pace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the G20 summit in Rome for an extended weekend of intense diplomacy, which also includes a pitstop at Glasgow for the global climate summit conference. The 2021 G20, under Italian Presidency, will […]
New Quad signals bigger role for India in Middle East
With rapidly shifting geopolitical equations in the region, the foreign ministers of India, Israel, the US and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have launched a four-way international forum for enhancing economic and security cooperation, which is being hailed as a new Quad for the Middle East. The first meeting of the foreign ministers of the […]
India, EU review 2025 roadmap, agree to advance FTA talks
BRUSSELS: More than five months after their virtual summit, senior officials of India and the 27-nation European Union held a review meeting in Brussels and decided to intensify their cooperation in combating Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and accelerating global economic recovery. The 3rd India-EU Strategic Partnership Review was co-chaired by Ms. Reenat Sandhu, Secretary (West), […]
Quad set to grow stronger, more focus on economic than China
The Quad grouping of India, US, Japan and Australia is set to move beyond China fixation to diversify its agenda which will have more economic content rather than security and geopolitical, said eminent ex-US and Indian diplomats at an online conference. Five days after the first in-person Quad summit held in Washington on September 24, […]
Mapping the future of Quad
We are meeting at a time when the world order is under enormous stress and is rapidly mutating, generating new alignments and realignments. The Quad – the four-nation plurilateral grouping comprising the four major democracies – India, US, Japan and Australia – is the product of this prolonged geopolitical churning. The Quad nearly died a […]
A New Summit: Branding Quad as a force for global good
History was made on a pleasant afternoon in Washington DC as the leaders of US, India, Japan and Australia exuded democratic camaraderie, and vowed to fashion a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific and to play the role of “force of global public good,” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words. With China listening and the world […]
The Quad Moment: Unpacking new geopolitical alphabet
The Quad Moment is finally here, with President Joe Biden going out of his way to host the first face-to-face summit of the leaders of the four like-minded democracies in Washington amid the persistence of the coronavirus pandemic in his country. Quad vaccines ‘Made in India’ Going by the buzz, the first in-person Quad summit […]