India, “a great power” pursuing its own national interests, is facing “completely unjustified” pressure over its relations with Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

“India is a great power, sets its own national interests, determines its own national interests, chooses its own partners, and we know that India is being subjected to enormous pressure, completely unjustified, pressure in the international arena,” he said at a news conference here on Wednesday.

“I think India is doing everything right,” he said defending India’s ties with Russia, particularly energy cooperation, against the criticism during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow last week.

Lavrov called Ukraine President Volodymyr’s remarks about Prime Minister Modi’s Moscow visit “very insulting”.

He noted that India called Ukraine’s ambassador to India, Oleksandr Polishchuk, to the Ministry of External Affairs and protested Zelensky’s remark.

Zelensky had posted on X, “It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day” when a children’s hospital in Kyiv was hit by a Russian missile.

Bracketing China with India, Lavrov attacked the West’s criticism of these “Asian giants”.

He said, “A multipolar world is a reality. It’s not just a made-up of fiction.”

“The fact that the West is exhibiting its displeasure to powers like China, like India, well, it shows the lack of erudition, the inability to partake in diplomacy, and also speaks to the failure of political analysts,” he said.

“It’s really beneath them, behaving this way … in particular when they’re speaking in this way to these two giants, these two great powers,” he added.

US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during Prime Minister Modi’s Moscow visit, “We made quite clear directly with India our concerns about their relationship with Russia.”

“India is a strategic partner with whom we engage in a full and frank dialogue, and that includes on our concerns about the relationship with Russia,” he said.

Lavrov spoke of India’s External Affairs Minister’s unapologetic defence of buying energy products from Russia.

“My colleague Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, after a tour of Western states, answering questions, including the question of why are you buying more oil from Russia, he cited statistics and those statistics showed that the West has also increased its purchases of gas from the Russian Federation despite some of the restrictions that have been imposed, gas and oil as well,” he said.

“And then he went on to say that India will decide for itself, how to trade with whom and how to defend its national interests,” Lavrov added.

In December 2022, during German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock’s visit to New Delhi, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar told a Western reporter that during a ten-month period that year, the European Union had imported more Russian oil than the next 10 countries combined and that its import was six times India’s.

The EU also imports gas and coal, he said.

Also at a media interaction in London, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said that India had “actually softened the oil markets and the gas markets through our purchase policies. We have, as a consequence, actually managed global inflation and people should be saying thank you”. AGENCIES

 As instability intensifies in Haiti, displaced women and girls are increasingly vulnerable to sexual violence, according to a report released by UN Women.

The report paints a grim picture of the living conditions for approximately 300,000 displaced women and girls in Haiti amid political chaos, rampant gang violence, and the ongoing hurricane season, Xinhua news agency reported.

With over half of the 580,000 displaced persons in Haiti being female, the UN Women Rapid Gender Assessment underscores the peril in makeshift camps lacking essential amenities, making them particularly susceptible to sexual and gender-based violence.

The survey, conducted in April across six major displacement sites in Port-au-Prince, revealed a lack of basic security measures like lighting and locks in critical areas, including bedrooms and bathrooms.

The presence of gangs and the daily threat of stray bullets amplify the dangers, highlighting the urgent need for enhanced protection measures in these camps.

The study also noted that aggression, particularly rape, is often employed as a tactic by gangs to control women’s access to humanitarian aid within the camps.

“Our report tells us that the level of insecurity and brutality, including sexual violence, that women are facing at the hands of gangs in Haiti is unprecedented. It must stop now,” UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said.

She urged the Haitian government to adopt preventive and responsive measures against the violence and to involve women more in camp management to ensure their safety concerns are addressed.

The report further revealed the economic desperation faced by the women in the camps, with nearly 90 per cent having no source of income. Over 10 per cent have considered or resorted to sex work to meet their basic needs, while 20 per cent knew someone who had engaged in such activities. Additionally, about 16 per cent of respondents reported feeling intimidated, harassed, or traumatised by armed gangs, and almost 70 per cent were mentally affected by the increase in violence.

In response, UN Women is aiding women’s organisations in Haiti to support displaced communities through various projects funded by international partners, including training police officers to prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence and supporting women entrepreneurs affected by the ongoing violence.

This report underlines the critical situation in Haiti and the essential role of international and local actions in safeguarding and empowering the displaced female population amidst the crisis. AGENCIES

The Indian Embassy in Bangladesh on Thursday issued an advisory urging Indian students and nationals residing in the country to restrict their outdoor movements in the wake of ongoing massive student protests throughout the country, which has resulted in at least six deaths so far.

“In view of the ongoing situation in Bangladesh, the Indian community members and the Indian students residing in Bangladesh are advised to avoid travel and minimise their movement outside their living premises,” the advisory stated.

The advisory has also issued a 24-hour emergency helpline number and urged Indian nationals to reach out to the High Commission in Dhaka and Assistant High Commissions for any need or assistance as most of the country observed a complete shutdown on Thursday.

Student demonstrations in Bangladesh have taken a violent turn as anti-quota protesters clashed with members of the ruling Awami League party’s student wing across the country, local media reported.

Reports cited that as many as six people, including a child, have been killed in the clashes between the protestors and the security officials in Dhaka’s Shonir Akhra area.

Incidents of fires and vandalism have been reported, with protestors setting off tyres, wooden logs, motorcycles and toll plaza booths ablaze across the country.

Outraged by the high unemployment rate in the country, students in Bangladesh are demanding the quashing of the 30 per cent reservation quota for the families of veterans of the 1971 Independence War.

The quota system in government jobs was scrapped in 2018 after a major student movement but was reinstated by a court in June.

On Wednesday, during an address to the nation, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asserted that there is an opportunity to resolve the issue through a legal process as the government has already appealed to the apex court against the court’s verdict, and a hearing date has been fixed in the Appellate Division.

“It is a matter of sorrow that some vested quarters started making different kinds of statements and engaged in terrorist activities to gain their ambitious intentions centring on this movement. As the matter has been brought before the top court, I call upon all to keep patience,” said the Bangladesh PM. AGENCIES

 India’s ascent from the “Fragile Five” to the fastest-growing major economy has lessons for other developing countries, according to Suman Bery, the vice chair of NITI Aayog.

“The government came out with a white paper which talks about the situation they inherited: India as a part of the so-called ‘Fragile Five’; and now, [it is] one of the fastest-growing economies in the world”.

Bery spoke exclusively to the IANS UN Bureau just after presenting India’s report card at the UN’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

Asked about what India’s experience can show the other developing countries, he said, “India has its own challenges, and I think one reason for India’s success is that it has mechanisms to come up with its own solutions”.

“With Prime Minister Modi, having been at the helm for ten years and now having been selected to be Prime Minister, another five years, I think there are certain lessons to be drawn”, he said.

“A lot of that has to do with sheer economic management, making sure that the inflation rate is down, good administration, the GST (Goods and Services Tax)”, he said.

Above all, he said, economic and financial stability was important and the government had its mandate.

“So, there are certain basics, which, I think, India’s experience confirms are important”, Bery said.

In “India’s case the emphasis even at the time of Covid and after Covid on infrastructure has been quite important, important for employment and productivity, also important for connectivity”, he said.

“And finally, the digital story is fairly well recognised” around the world”, he said, and what it “points out is actually the link between intelligent policy and a fairly dynamic private sector, a successful model of public-private partnership”.

The “Fragile Five” term was coined by the international investment company Morgan Stanley that lumped India with four other developing nations signalling their economic vulnerability.

That was a year before Narendra Modi’s election to his first term as Prime Minister.

The International Monetary Fund has also reiterated India’s position as the fastest-growing economy with a growth rate of 7.5 per cent for this year, continuing the world record for the seventh year in a row.

As he explained the contours of Viksit Bharat and PM Modi’s vision for India as a developed society by 2047, Bery with his tousled grey hair and scholarly mien projected the image of a professor rather than someone at the intersection of politics and bureaucracy.

He brings to the NITI Aayog the experiences of working with the private sector, as the chief economist of Royal Dutch Shell, with think tanks as a scholar, with the World Bank as an economist, and as a government adviser.

At the UN political forum where member nations presented their progress with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – 17 targets to be reached by 2030 – Bery said India laid emphasis on strengthening partnerships to facilitate access to adequate financing, technology and capacity building for the Global South.

He said that India was on track to achieve years early the goal of reducing the number of those living in poverty by half.

“Around 135 million Indians escaped multidimensional poverty in the five years between 2015-16 and 2019-21, made possible through integration of social safety nets, infrastructure development and multiple financial inclusion programmes”, he told the forum.

India has achieved progress towards this and other goals encompassing ending hunger, extending healthcare, fighting climate change, and institution-building “in a participative, democratic framework with orderly transfers of power at the level of Indian states and at the centre”, he said.

Asked during the IANS interview about the role of the private sector in achieving India’s development vision, he acknowledged, “I would say that we have not made as much progress as we might have”.

“One is that after the [economic] liberalisation of 1991, the private sector was meant to play a much larger role”, he said, but “it took, frankly, 30 years and the arrival of a new government to recognise the reality”.

“In going from development being a question of government schemes to development being seen as a question of appropriate policies, I think what we have to do now is trust more in our policies, and have more stable policies”, he said.

Building the digital public infrastructure is an area where the private sector made a successful contribution that could be a model.

What it “points out is the importance of intelligent regulation”, he said.

“There are two dimensions about how the government and, therefore, NITI Aayog interacts with the private sector: One is through policies, and the other is through regulation”, Bery said.

“And in both of these, I think India has made a promising start, but to become a developed economy by 2047 much more needs to happen”, he said. AGENCIES

 J. D. Vance accepted the Republican party nomination for vice-president with a well-received speech that among other things noted the “incredible people” immigrants from South Asia, including his wife Usha Vance’s family from India.

“I am, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country, incredible people…, people who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways,” he said on Wednesday night as he addressed the complex issue of immigration which is at the top of the re-election agenda of former President Donald Trump who has been a strong and vocal opponent of undocumented migrants.

Vance speech was repeatedly interrupted by loud cheering and clapping as he explained Trump’s populist agenda in everyday terms, connecting ideas to real-life experiences, juxtaposing important junctures in his life to economic policies backed by President Joe Biden in his long career in politics spanning more than 50 years as a Democratic Senator and then eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president.

Vance is married to Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Telugu immigrants from India. They met at the Yale Law School and married upon graduation. They have three children.

Usha Vance introduced her husband for his acceptance speech on the third night of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with a lead-in from Dn Trump Jr, the former president’s eldest son who was Vance’s strongest advocate in Trump’s inner circle.

“My background is very different from JD’s,” Usha Vance said, referring to her husband by his initials as does everyone else. “I grew up in San Diego, a middle-class community with two loving parents, both immigrants from India and a wonderful sister.”

“Vance had a troubled upbringing. His grandmother raised him as his mother – a single parent – struggled with addiction in Middletown, Ohio. He joined the Marine Corps after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack and returned to attend college on a special scholarship for US Army personnel. He studied law at Yale and set up a venture capital business. He entered politics in recent years and was elected to public office for the first time in 2022, to represent Ohio in the US Senate,” she said.

“That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry is a testament to this great country,” Usha Vance said.

“It is also a testament to JD and tells you about who he is. When JD met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm. He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.”

She added, “Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food for my mother Indian food. Before I knew it, he had become an integral part of my family.” AGENCIES

 One person was killed and six others were injured after a car hit the terrace of a cafe in Paris, the French news channel BFMTV reported, citing police sources.

The accident occurred around 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday evening near the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th arrondissement, reports Xinhua news agency.

The initial toll was one death and three serious injuries, but the number of casualties may rise.

The driver of the vehicle fled the scene, and police arrested a passenger, who tested positive for drugs and alcohol, BFMTV reported, citing police sources.

Police are conducting forensic examinations on the vehicle, with investigations pointing to a “car accident,” the news channel added. AGENCIES

 Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) arrested a 25-year-old foreign suspect and seized 4.15 kg of “Ice” in a recent operation, according to a statement published on Thursday.

Following an intelligence exchange with the Hong Kong Police Force, CNB officers arrested the suspect on Tuesday and found the drugs concealed within the base structure of two ornamental lion figurines, Xinhua news agency reported.

The seized “Ice” is estimated to be worth about 500,000 Singapore dollars ( $373,000), said the statement.

Investigations are underway.Further details are awaited. AGENCIES

 Palestine has rejected an Israeli-US proposal to temporarily reopen the Rafah border crossing, calling instead for an Israeli withdrawal and the establishment of Palestinian sovereignty, said an official source.

A meeting was held last week involving representatives from Palestine, the United States, and Israel to explore the possibility of operating the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, according to the source who requested anonymity, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Israeli side proposed that six Palestinian employees participate in managing the crossing without uniforms or police, and without raising the Palestinian flag, said the source in a statement.

The source explained that the proposal was rejected because it aimed to open the crossing temporarily without Palestinian sovereignty, which contradicts the Palestinian position and international agreements.

According to the source, the Palestinian stance is in line with the 2005 agreement on the Rafah crossing, which requires Palestinian sovereignty, European participation, and a full Israeli withdrawal from the crossing.

The meeting concluded after the Israeli-US proposal was rejected by the Palestinians, and there has been no further dialogue following the meeting, said the source.

The meeting is considered the first between Israel and representatives of the Palestinian Authority to discuss the future of Gaza after the ongoing conflict.

On May 7, the Israeli army announced the imposition of “operational” control over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, which led to the cessation of aid delivery from Egypt into Gaza through the crossing. AGENCIES

 The UK at a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East has expressed its deep concern about the “risk of regional escalation, in particular along the blue line between Israel and Lebanon”.

UK Permanent Representative to the UN Barbara Woodward, during the meeting on Wednesday, said, “Nine months since the 7 October attacks, at least 120 hostages, alive and dead, remain held in horrific conditions. Innocent Palestinians continue to suffer and die in Gaza. A devastating humanitarian crisis is worsening by the day. There is an imminent risk of famine. And we are deeply concerned about the risk of regional escalation, in particular along the blue line between Israel and Lebanon.”

“In one of his first acts as UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer set out the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire, immediate release of all hostages, and an immediate surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza. We strongly support the ongoing efforts of Egypt, Qatar and the United States to this end – the deal on the table… is the best chance to support this,” she said.

Woodward also urged both sides (Hamas and Israel) to show flexibility in negotiations and demonstrate a “clear and firm” commitment to ensure the implementation of the deal.

“We are calling on Israel to protect civilians, to allow unfettered aid into Gaza and to ensure the UN and humanitarian actors have the access and equipment necessary to safely get aid to those who need it most…,” she said.

“… We condemn recent Israeli expansion of settlements. We reject decisions by the Government of Israel to declare 2,357 hectares of land in the West Bank as ‘state lands’ so far this year — the largest of such declarations of state land since the Oslo Accords. Such acts are not only illegal under international law, but also undermine prospects for a two-state solution. We demand a halt to these illegal activities,” Woodward added.

She further said that reports of civilian casualties following Israeli strikes near schools and designated humanitarian zones in Gaza in recent weeks were appalling – as the Foreign Secretary said, urgent measures are needed to protect civilians.

“Peace will be sustainable only if both Israelis and Palestinians recommit to a renewed peace process resulting in a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian State – the undeniable right of the Palestinian people,” she said. AGENCIES

 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged a renewed emphasis on a political resolution to the persistent crisis in Gaza.

“We must refocus on finding a political solution that will end the occupation and resolve the conflict in line with international law, and relevant United Nations resolutions,” Courtenay Rattray, chef de cabinet of the UN secretary-general, told the Security Council debate on Gaza, on behalf of the UN chief.

Rattray highlighted the severe circumstances in Gaza, characterised by ongoing conflict and lawlessness, and raised concerns about the escalating regional instability and the significant crisis in Gaza, Xinhua news agency reported.

Rattray provided a sombre update on the situation, stating, “In recent weeks, Israeli military operations and fighting intensified across Gaza. Rockets continue to be launched by Palestinian armed groups from Gaza towards Israeli population centres.”

“Rafah is in ruins — and the Rafah crossing remains closed, further hampering humanitarian operations,” he added.

He noted the massive displacement within Gaza, where “almost 2 million people have been displaced — nearly the entire population of Gaza — and many of them multiple times.”

Highlighting the breakdown in public order and the increasing threat of a regional spillover, Rattray reiterated the UN’s call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

He stressed the critical need for consistent access to humanitarian aid across all crossing points to ensure the survival and well-being of the civilian population.

Rattray stressed the importance of immediate action to address these crises, stating, “We must change course. All settlement activity must cease immediately.”

He called for the restoration of governance in Gaza under a legitimate Palestinian government and the strengthening of the Palestinian Authority to lead recovery efforts.

The United Nations remains committed to supporting all efforts towards reaching a sustainable peace agreement that adheres to international law and UN resolutions.

Rattray concluded with a call to all parties involved to intensify efforts to end the violence and to work towards a lasting resolution that respects the rights and dignities of all people involved. AGENCIES