13 JULY 2015: India to get full SCO membership in a year

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Ufa, Russia, ended with an announcement that he would visit Islamabad in 2016 for the SAARC summit, but made no commitment on restarting dialogue. In a joint statement after the meeting that lasted more than an hour at the Congress Hall of Ufa, the Prime Ministers tasked Foreign Secretaries S. Jaishankar and Aizaz Chowdhury with announcing a five-pronged statement of progress in their discussions, including meetings between National Security Advisers Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz and between military and border security force chiefs of the two nations, and “discussing ways and means” to expedite the Mumbai 26/11 trial and “providing voice samples” as evidence. They discussed humanitarian gestures of releasing more than 300 fishermen held on each side, and promoting a “mechanism for religious tourism” that will help Hindu, Muslim and Sikh pilgrims on the two sides. Leaving for Turkmenistan on Friday, Mr. Modi recorded on his Twitter handle that he was “satisfied” with all his meetings at the BRICS and SCO summits. The NSAs will meet in New Delhi in August, ahead of the next possible meeting between the Prime Ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. Sources said the discussions between Mr. Doval and Mr. Aziz would be the “most important” as it would discuss the outstanding issue for India on cross-border terror groups and action against Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi and other Mumbai attack accused. Lakhvi, who was the operations commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba which had trained Ajmal Kasab and the other terrorists that attacked Mumbai, was given bail by a Pakistani trial court in April and has subsequently been exempted from personal appearances in court. In May, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said that unless Pakistan took action against Lakhvi and other terrorists, dialogue “would not materialise”.

Ø  India and Pakistan were on Friday accepted as full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional grouping including China and Russia, with which Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered to work in combating terror and boosting trade by easing barriers.

Ø  In the heaviest commercial launch since its inception, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on Friday launched five satellites, weighing 1,440 kg for a United Kingdom-based company. Lifting off from the First Launch Pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre here at 9.58 pm, PSLV C-28 launched three identical mini satellites of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), besides two technology demonstrators — CBNT-1 and De-OrbitSail— for Surrey Space Technology Limited into the intended orbits. ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar termed it an “extremely successful mission.” ?Since it was a “challenge” for the ISRO to accommodate 3-metre high satellites into the existing payload structure of PSLV, the national space agency had specially designed a circular launch adapter and a triangular deck for Friday’s launch.?The DMC satellites would eventually be fine tuned into the 647-km Sun Synchronous Orbit. The launch marked the 30{+t}{+h}?successful mission of PSLV, also known as ISRO’s ‘workhorse.’ The national space agency had used the XL version for the ninth time.