Ø The UAE leadership broke protocol to welcome Prime Minister
Narendra Modi here on Sunday, with Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al
Nayhan of Abu Dhabi turning out with five of his brothers to greet him at the
airport in a rare gesture. The pragmatic leadership of the Emirate opened up
for the Prime Minister. The high point of the first day’s engagement was Mr.
Modi’s visit to Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the world’s third largest mosque,
leaving some powerful images for consumption by a domestic audience. His
balance of the domestic and the foreign during the visit was exemplified by a
short interaction with blue-collar workers in ICAD Residential Labour Camp,
which was more photo-op than substantive.
Ø The government summoned High Commissioner Abdul Basit on Sunday to
register India’s protest against “unprovoked firing” by Pakistani troops on the
Line of Control since August 8 that has left at least six persons, including a
woman and a young boy, dead and more than 10 injured.
Ø There are few men who could claim credit for midwifing not one but
two terrorist operations that changed the course of history. But if everything
Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul is credited with is true, his role in building the
Mujahideen in Afghanistan’s resistance to the Soviet Union and propping up a
Taliban government in Kabul, and in raising the first militant groups to fight
Pakistan’s proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, changed the Indian subcontinent in
drastic and diabolical ways. There are many in Pakistan who marked Lt. Gen.
Gul’s death on Saturday night of a brain haemorrhage in the mountain resort of
Murree, with grief. Condolences poured in at his funeral in Rawalpindi’s polo
grounds, primarily from the military in Pakistan, but also from across the
leadership. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed his “heartfelt condolences”
over Lt. Gen. Gul’s death.
Ø In a sign of increasing Indian defence exports in the global
market, Tata Motors has supplied 520 vehicles to the United Nations
Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), including
ambulances, jeeps, water and fuel tankers, recovery and refrigeration trucks
and buses.
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