US welcomes India's leadership role

The U.S. on Tuesday said it welcomes a greater global leadership role for India, two days after its Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remark describing India as a “self-appointed frontrunner” for a permanent UNSC seat was leaked.

“We regret and condemn any unauthorised disclosures of confidential information and sensitive national security information,” U.S. Ambassador to India Timothy J. Roemer said while reacting to the release of diplomatic cables by whistle-blower Website WikiLeaks.

“By releasing these documents front of World, WikiLeaks puts at risk the cause of human rights, the lives and work of dedicated individuals, and threatens our ability to conduct essential private and diplomatic dialogue ,” he said.

As part of its massive leak of a quarter million classified documents of the U.S. government, the Website released a “secret” cable issued by Ms. Clinton where she has described India as a “self-appointed frontrunner” for a permanent UNSC seat.

She had also directed U.S. envoys to seek minute details about Indian diplomats stationed at the United Nations headquarters, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks.

Mr. Roemer said, “The U.S. welcomes a greater global leadership role for India and values its perspectives on how to meet common challenges, including countering terrorism, securing our maritime domains, and working together to promote democratic, political and economic development around the world.”

Indian student recalls attack in Australia

The 31-year-old man, who wants to remain anonymous, now bears a 26-stitch scar where doctors performed emergency surgery on his punctured bowel after the attack on November 5.

The Indian cookery student in Melbourne has recalled the night he was stabbed in the stomach by two men after he finished work in a South Yarra bar.

He said the two men approached him in Lovers Walk South around 11.10pm as he walked to a railway station.

They asked him for money, and when he said he had none "one punched me in the stomach, scolded me and said dirty words".


"I collected some courage and ran away."

It wasn't until he reached South Yarra rail station that he realised he was bleeding and that he'd been stabbed.

He hailed a taxi, which took him to The Alfred hospital where he was operated on immediately.

The victim, who has been in Australia for two years, spent the next 10 days in hospital, and only then did he let his parents in India know what had happened.

Senior Constable Emma Frankcom is appealing for witnesses to the attack to come forward.

"It was a very callous attack, and we want these two men off the streets," she told reporters.

She said the attack did not appear to be racially motivated.

"It appears to be a random attack," she said.

Bobby Jindal: Obama's India visit a positive sign

Louisiana's Indian-American Republican Governor Bobby Jindal says one of the things that he likes about Democrat President Barack Obama is his building an economic relationship with India.

"I think that when he went to India and made a strong relationship with the world's largest democracy, a free market economy. That was a positive sign," he told CNN Tuesday when asked to name one thing on which he agrees with Obama.

Jindal, who is generally highly critical of Obama, also said: "I agree with his refusing to bend down to the liberals that asked him to put an artificial ... to withdraw artificially before we're done in Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, in an interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Jindal repeated his charge that at a meeting with the president during the gulf oil spill he and a parish official were told specifically by Obama not to go on TV and criticise him.

It was clear Obama was frustrated with the level of criticism he was getting, he said and went on to accuse Obama of caring more about perception and politics than actually cutting through the red tape and getting things done.

India can't get UN seat without China backing

Pakistan's permanent envoy to the UN, Abdullah Hussain Haroon said India will never be able to secure a permanent seat at the UN Security Council unless China and Russia back it.

"Without veto power, India will not be of any threat to Pakistan even if it manages to enter UNSC as a permanent member," Haroon told reporters at Hyderabad in Sindh province.

US President Barack Obama's support to India's right to get a UN Security Council seat has not gone down well in Pakistan.

Many Pakistanis feel that India would ride roughshod over Islamabad if it got veto rights -- like the other five permanent Security Council members.

Haroon called for "judicious use of resources" to achieve financial stability in Pakistan, cautioning that China and India were the emerging powers in the region who would control and influence the decision-making processes in future.

The envoy said he had almost completed his stint in the UN and was not interested in continuing in the post. "I have written to the president that I want to return to Pakistan."

India begins building homes for displaced Sri Lankans

Ahead of foreign minister S M Krishna's visit to Sri Lanka, India has started work on construction of 1,000 homes for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the island nation. The construction of 1,000 homes is a pilot project for the commitment made by India to build 50,000 houses in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.

An MoU was signed last week between Hindustan Prefab Limited (HPL) under the administrative control of the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation and the ministry of external affairs for taking up the project. Krishna will leave for Colombo on Thursday where he will hold bilateral talks, call on President Mahinda Rajapaksa as well as open Indian consulates in Jaffna and Hambantota. Krishna and his Sri Lankan counterpart G L Peiris will preside over the meeting of their Joint Commission in Colombo.

The Indian minister will inaugurate a housing project and rail links in Sri Lanka's north, which was the main war theatre. One of the railway lines will link Talaimannar and Madhu Church in Lanka's northwest and the other will link Omanthai and Pallai in north. While Colombo has almost completed the process of resettlement, Krishna is expected to take up the issue of devolution of power to the minorities, a commitment made earlier made by Sri Lankan leaders to New Delhi.

Indo - Canada Free Trade Pact To Boost Trading..

A free trade agreement between India and Canada would boost bilateral trade by 50 per cent and increase the two-way merchandise trade to USD 15 billion over the next five-years, a senior Canadian Minister said.

"Canadians are excited about the prospect of a free trade agreement with India. Canadian businesses and investors have long called for closer ties to the Indian market place, which is one of the most exciting anywhere in the world," the Minister told reporters here today during his visit to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

He said that a free trade agreement would lead to a 50 per cent boost in bilateral trade between the two countries.

"Both the Governments have set a target of increasing the mutual bilateral merchandise trade to USD 15 billion in the next five years. A free trade agreement will help us get there," he said.

Last year, the bilateral merchandise trade reached close to USD 4.2 billion, he said.

Stronger Indo-US ties not to counterbalance China: US

President Barack Obama's enthusiasm for a stronger Indo-US relationship is not to "counterbalance" China's growing influence over Asia, a top American official has said.



"I don't think you heard anybody say that in the course of the President's three-day visit (to India), we're looking to counterbalance China in any way," Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, told journalists in New York and Washington during a digital video press conference.

"The President repeatedly made clear that we want a positive, cooperative and constructive relations with China in the same way that India does," he said.

Blake asserted that Obama's trip was to support India's expanding role in global institutions and Asian institutions, but the backing is not at China's cost.

"I think this is much more about how to expand India's role in some of these global institutions and in some of the Asian institutions, and we expressed clearly our support for that. But we do not see that growing role as coming at the expense of China," he said, pointing that secretary of state Hillary Clinton had recently said that "we do not seek to contain China."

After Obama endorsed India's bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council, US media pointed out that this was to counterbalance China.