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THE HEART OF TERRORISM Pakistan named and shamed. Will it reform? At the Heart of Asia (HoA) summit which concluded on Sunday in Amritsar, Pakistan was well and truly cornered for promoting terrorism. Its isolation can be understood from the fact that for the first time, a HoA declaration named the Pakistan-based terror outfits, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as forces that are working to destabilise the region. This is a severe indictment of Pakistan, since not only do the two organisations operate from Pakistani soil but they also get overt and covert support from the establishment, especially from the Army there....

NEW DELHI — Indian airports were on high alert Friday after intelligence services received information that Al Qaeda-linked militants were plotting to hijack a plane. Such an attack would be the first major terror strike against India since 10 militants rampaged through the city of Mumbai for three days in November 2008, killing 166 people. Aviation spokeswoman Moushumi Chakravarty said that the airports were placed on alert Thursday after the government received warnings from the intelligence agencies.(continued)

ASIAN OUTLOOK AEI Online Publication Date: September 7, 2006 Although China and India have announced that their relationship is important enough to “reshape the world,” Beijing views its increasingly important ties with Delhi as a means to manage India’s growing strength. China has combined traditional strategic balancing and diplomatic engagement in an effort to set its own terms for India’s emergence as a great power. Without American support, India is at risk of being boxed in by Beijing’s containment strategy. In an impressive display of whirlwind diplomacy, China and India have just negotiated a series of major agreements: a strategic...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

India and China are locked in a bitter struggle for Pan-Asian leadership in South, Southeast and Central Asia. Three regional economic and security organizations—South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—symbolize their jostling for power. Of these, SAARC is symbolically significant with little political or economic substance. ASEAN combines Southeast Asia’s economic concerns with its security needs, while the SCO primarily remains a security organization dominated by Beijing’s interests in Central Asia. These organizations, however, articulate multilateral concerns, which are greatly shaped by the competing interests of Beijing...

South Asia's foreign ministers agreed on three key pacts including a free trade agreement to be signed at a regional summit opening in Islamabad this weekend, setting a positive note ahead of the landmark seven-nation meeting. "This development (agreement on three documents) would contribute in achieving even bilateral progress," said India's Foreign Secretary Shashank, who uses only one name, at a briefing, striking a buoyant tone on the eve of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's arrival in host country Pakistan. The accords were reached during meetings that began on a high note when Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers Yashwant...