8 JUNE 2016

Ø  India came closer to the first of four nuclear regimes it is trying to gain entry into, with countries belonging to the 34-member Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) raising no objection to India’s membership later this year. Diplomatic sources confirmed to The Hindu that after a proposal, circulated by the current Dutch chairperson of MTCR, had met with no objection by the deadline on Monday, India’s membership is a “done deal”, with only “formalities and protocol” remaining. The government didn’t officially comment on the development, but a press conference in Washington after the PM-Obama meet, Foreign Secretary Jaishankar said that President Obama had welcomed “our imminent entry” into MTCR. Meanwhile, the MTCR chair has now begun the next stage of formalities for India, which require each of the 34 member countries to send a “diplomatic note” stating formally that they accept India’s membership. India will also receive membership documents which it must ratify and return, the official told The Hindu. India’s membership had been blocked in 2015 by Italy that seemed to link it to the standoff over the detention of the Italian marines. With the return of the second marine, Salvatore Girone, to Rome on May 29, the sources said, “Italy is no longer blocking the consensus.” India is also hopeful of building on the MTCR entry with membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Meanwhile, China has insisted on consensus among the NSG members over India's admission. “Members still differ on the accession of countries which are not party states to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). China stands for continuous and full discussions within the group on this issue in order to forge consensus,” the Foreign Ministry said in a written response to a PTI query.

Ø  India and the U.S. agreed to initiate domestic processes to ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change — negotiated by over 190 countries in December 2015. Taking a further step in civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCL) and nuclear reactor builders, Westinghouse, will immediately start the engineering and site design work on six reactors to be set up in Gujarat under an early work agreement; all commercial agreements will be completed by June 2017, according to a White House official. After a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said: “In Paris the joining of forces between India and U.S. helped forge the historical agreement to effectively deal with climate change, and we discussed how we can, as quickly as possible bring the Paris agreement into force, how we can make sure that climate financing that is necessary for India to embark on the bold vision for solar energy and clean energy that PM Modi has laid out, can be accomplished. We discussed, in addition, the progress we made around civil nuclear energy, and I indicated our support for India becoming part of the NSG, to ensure these technologies, that are critical for India’s development, are available.” India’s ratifying the deal — which will be a decision of the Union Cabinet — will take it closer to coming into force since ratification by 55 countries which together account for at least 55 per cent of the total global emissions, is required for the pact to become operational. At 6.96 per cent of the total global emissions, India ranks fourth after China, the U.S. and the EU on the list of polluters.

Ø  the U. S. government handed over the Chola age Sripuranthan Ganesha idol and 200 other stolen Indian artefacts to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with U. S. AttorneyGeneral Loretta Lynch in attendance. Behind the photo- op in Washington is a potboiler of a story, spread across continents, involving the governments of India and the United States, policemen in Tamil Nadu and a voluntary group — the India Pride Project ( IPP), to bring the Ganesha idol home. Speaking to The Hindu, co- founder of the IPP Anurag Saxena said the return of the idol was a three- year labour of love for the group. It was in 2013 that his IPP colleague, Vijay Kumar Sundaresan, an accountant in the shipping sector, matched the photograph of the idol taken by the French Institute at Puducherry ( IFP) with that of an idol housed in the Toledo Museum of Art ( TMA) in Ohio, U. S. His blogs, both on his own site and at IPP, piqued the interest of the local press who contacted the TMA over the stolen idol. In an ongoing investigation by the U. S. Homeland Security department into art dealer Subhash Kapoor’s questionable dealings, the Ganesha idol was among the many object d’arts found to be stolen and housed in museums across the world. Mr. Kapoor is undergoing trial in Tamil Nadu in various cases of idol thefts. The role of Brenton Easter, who heads the antiques division at the Homeland Security Investigation, was crucial in this matter. The role of groups like ours is basically knowing that an artefact of this kind has gone missing and establishing that it is missing, like filing FIRs and getting the law enforcement agencies in. Then come the investigations into where these artefacts may have landed up, matching photographs, contacting people in the art world etc. The final restitution demand and its acceptance are between governments,” said Mr. Saxena, otherwise working as the Asia Pacific CEO for the World Education Council in Singapore.

Ø  It may take more than a year for the India- Japan civil nuclear agreement to fructify. This is because the National Diet, the Japanese legislature, failed to take up the agreement in the summer legislative session that ended on June 1, Japanese diplomats further told The Hindu, adding that even the “ technical details” were yet to be finalised.

Ø  A proposed milestone mission in the study of gravitational waves — LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna project — received a boost, as the first, encouraging results from the LISA Pathfinder , a smaller, “walk before you run” project were released in a paper in Physical Review Letters on June 7.

Ø  The recent India-Iran deal to develop the strategic Chabahar Port is part of India’s “larger geostrategic calculations” to gain access to West Asia and Central Asia and to counter the Pakistan-China plan to develop Gwadar port.