Top intelligence officers from India and Pakistan held secret talks in Dubai in January in a new effort to calm military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, people with close knowledge of the matter have told the Reuters news agency in New Delhi.
Ties between the nuclear-armed rivals have been on ice since a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir in 2019 was traced to Pakistan-based fighters that led to India sending warplanes to Pakistan.
Later that year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew Indian-ruled Kashmir’s autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the Muslim-majority territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.
The presence of Chinese vessels at a disputed reef off the Philippines could ignite “unwanted hostilities”, a top aide to President Rodrigo Duterte has warned, intensifying a diplomatic spat over the ships that Manila described as “maritime militia”.
More than 200 Chinese boats were first spotted on March 7 at Whitsun Reef, approximately 320 kilometres (175 nautical miles) west of Palawan Island within the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Most of them have since scattered across the Spratly Islands but last week dozens of the Chinese-flagged vessels were still anchored at the boomerang-shaped reef, according to Philippine military patrols.
For weeks Manila has called on Beijing to withdraw the “maritime militia” vessels, saying their incursion into the Philippines’s EEZ is illegal as defined by the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
Kenya has refused to participate in hearings at the World Court about a maritime boundary dispute with Somalia over contested parts of the Indian Ocean, in a dispute that has strained the neighbours’ diplomatic relations.
The case was filed in 2014 by Somalia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the United Nation’s highest court for disputes between states – and a decision could determine rights to exploit oil and gas in the deep waters off the East African coastline.
Hearings, when both sides were due to present arguments, were scheduled for this week, but Kenya was not present in the first day on Monday in court or via video link.
Tarn Taran, India – Raghbir Singh Bhangala often stands looking at his fields beyond the barbed-wire fence that marks the border between India and Pakistan. He stands on five acres of his own farmland in the Tarn Taran district of India’s Punjab state, while the remaining eight acres is on the other side of the fence.
Bhangala, now 78, has spent more than 25 years of his life fighting for the right to till his land, ever since it was declared a restricted area because it falls between the fence and the so-called “zero line” – the international border between India and Pakistan.