5 JANUARY 2015: US double standard spoils charm of Indo-US relation

Ø  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Pakistan this month, shortly after certifying the Pakistan government’s “action against” Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).  The authorisation is likely to spark outrage in India. Mr. Kerry is due to visit the Vibrant Gujarat summit, which begins in Gandhinagar on January 11, ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit on January 24. Mr. Kerry will lead the Strategic Dialogue in Islamabad later in January, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry announced this week. Despite the fact that both the LeT and the JeM have resurfaced visibly in the past year in Pakistan and the founders of both, Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar, have held public rallies in Pakistan in 2014, the U.S. Secretary of State has signed off on a certification that the Pakistan government has “prevented al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad from operating in the territory of Pakistan” for the year. The certificate is a condition for the U.S. to disburse funds under the Kerry-Lugar Bill for civilian aid to Pakistan that was co-authored by Mr. Kerry in 2009. This year’s grant of $532 million to Pakistan will be disbursed shortly, as the Congress gave its nod to President Obama, the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson disclosed. According to official agency APP, Mr. Olson met Pakistan’s Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to finalise the agenda for Mr. Kerry’s upcoming visit. Significantly, the Kerry-Lugar Bill lapsed in September 2014, but only about half of the $7.5 billion outlay has been disbursed so far. According to Section 203 of the Bill, which is formally called the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act (S.1707), there are limitations on clearing the annual $1.5 billion assistance to Pakistan based on actions in the “preceding financial year.” The authorisation required is that the Pakistan government and military have “ceased support” to extremist and terror groups, that they have “prevented” groups such as the LeT and the JeM from operating in Pakistan, and carrying out attacks against its neighbours, while dismantling their bases in Muridke, FATA and Quetta.

Ø  The Indian Science Congress made history with a symposium on “Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit” that included a paper on the existence of interplanetary aircraft in India around 9,000 years ago, references to “cosmic connection” and a phenomenon explained as “fusion of science and spirituality due to inter-penetration law.” Held under the aegis of Mumbai University, this is the first time in its 102-year history that the Congress has included such a session, a move hailed by delegates as long overdue but criticised by many as mixing of science with mythology.

Ø  An alert has been sounded at airports in Delhi and other major cities following an anonymous call to a Kolkata-based booking office of Air India threatening that its Delhi-Kabul flight would be hijacked. We received an alert from intelligence agencies that Air India flights between Delhi and Kabul could be hijacked, following which we launched anti-hijacking measures and carried out anti-sabotage checks of the flights. While quick reaction teams have been kept on standby, Air India security staff has been asked to keep a close watch on any suspicious activity. In view of the security situation in Afghanistan, we take extra precautionary measures for flights on the Delhi-Kabul sector. Senior government functionaries visiting Kabul also take Air India flights.

Ø  A set of six telescopes collectively known as Spider — Sub-orbital Polarimeter for Inflation, Dust and the Epoch of Re-ionization — will circle Antarctica in a bid to observe a haze of faint, radio microwaves that envelops space. Such waves are thought to be the fading remnants of the primordial fireball in which it all started 13.8 billion years ago and the exercise would help scientists understand the phenomenon of the Big Bang, the most plausible theory explaining the origin of universe. The theory propounds that such curls would have been caused by violent disruptions of the space-time continuum when the universe began expanding. Spider is the sister experiment to a California Institute of Technology-based project known as Bicep, whose investigators made headlines last spring when they announced that they had recorded curlicues in a patch of the sky from a telescope at the South Pole.