The turnout at Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo has lessons for India and China alike.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France did one better than America’s Barack Obama: he clinched deals worth $20 billion with India in defence, atomic energy and civil aviation, while Mr Obama left New Delhi with trade deals worth $10 billion which promised to create 50,000 new jobs in the US.

France and Germany may agree to disagree on many issues but on Pakistan, they are unanimous that it must do more to combat terrorism.
Visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Pakistan must fight terrorism “determinedly”, and expeditiously bring the 26/11 terrorists to justice.

India’s delay in confirming its participation at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, when the jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo will be honoured in absentia, has confused and confounded some and made others anxious.

The US-backed gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan to India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan, is expected to make progress on the price of gas and the security of its delivery when Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, hosts a meeting in the second week of December.

Taiwan looks forward to upgrading its bilateral dialogue with India to the ministerial level in order to expand economic opportunities and deal more effectively with the challenges facing the two nati

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh firmly but politely stood his ground on talks with Pakistan, saying that a dialogue cannot take place when the “terror machine is as active as ever before”.

With Barack Obama’s arrival here from Mumbai, the focus would have shifted from trade to potential tradeoffs across a wide swathe of issues that will be germane to the fledgling strategic partnership

If Barack Obama disappointed some by not coming out strongly against Pakistan’s role in the Mumbai attacks, he made it up by announcing that more Indian defence and space organisations will be removed

In the US, Republicans have not only wrested control of the House of Representatives but also diminished the Democrats’ majority in the Senate. It does not bode well for Barack Obama but it offers a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges for Manmohan Singh, whose term ends only in 2014.
The shift in the balance of power on Capitol Hill will have implications for India’s foreign policy, particularly on contentious issues such as Af-Pak, China, Iran, non-proliferation and climate change.