Comments & Briefs

Though world opinion is still divided on whether the FMCT would include past stocks or not, Pakistan appears to have decided to continue with the production of fissile materials and oppose any talks at the CD.

The Indo-Pak peace conference concluded with a pledge to uphold democracy, but failed to demonstrate it by limiting its invitation only to representatives from the Kashmir valley and ignoring other stakeholders.

There is a contradiction between the CCP methodology which is based on loyalty to the authoritarian ideology and the information age which recognizes the importance of the individual as a critical entity.

The military dialogue seems likely to remain suspended over the arms sales issue; discord over Iran’s nuclear issue may increase and more war of words may define the relationships between the two countries.

To gain the trust of Seoul and Beijing, the DPJ government plans to present a bill in the Diet for granting the right of franchise to foreign nationals registered as permanent residents, a majority of whom are South Korean and Chinese.

Unless Baloch nationalists get their act together in pursuit of ‘achievable nationhood’, it will be only a matter of time before this latest upsurge in Balochistan will be brutally crushed.

Bhutan and China have decided on a joint field survey to enable harmonising the reference points and names of the disputed areas.

The landslide victory of Awami League in Bangladesh elections created hope of revival of the 1972 constitution of which secularism was an important element. The government of Shaikh Hasina is trying to deal with this issue in a cautious manner.

The issue of Bangladeshi illegal migration has troubled the state of Assam for decades now. Assamese political and social discourses fear that this unchecked migration from across the border will subvert their way of life and change the demographic profile of the state in the near future.

Across the globe, a crucial but largely unseen and unheard of force in the Global War on Terrorism is emerging – young, hardened, militant, radicalized recruits from Africa – a force potent enough to compel governments to revise their handbooks on how best to contend with Islamic extremism.