Recently, I happened to attend the 6th Indian Ocean conference ,2023 in Dhaka which was organized by the India Foundation in collaboration with Ministry of External Affairs of India and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh among others.
It was a dream of former Prime Minister (PM) Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who first envisaged opening an alternate sea route through Myanmar for the northeastern part of India in 2003. Bangladesh at that time was very non-committal on transit to India. The Ministry of external affairs (MEA) appointed the public sector consultancy company RITES to do a study in 2003. The operationalisation of Sittwe Port's new terminal was the beginning of the journey.
The signing of the maritime demarcation agreement covering 330 sq miles between extreme rivals — Lebanon and Israel — is no mean feat.
Harsh V. Pant & Pratnashree Basu The furtherance of India’s Act East Policy, maritime multilateralism, maritime security outreach and the building of stronger networks across the Indo-Pacific are some of the key elements which have made New Delhi and Hanoi…
On August 1, India assumed the presidency of the United Nations security council for the month and promptly got to work on setting the agenda with a focus on three major areas: maritime security, peacekeeping and counter-terrorism. India began its eighth two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UNSC on January 1; this is its first presidency during its 2021-2022 tenure. New Delhi clearly wants to leave a significant imprint of its presidency, as was underlined by the Union external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, when he said that India will always be “a voice of moderation, an advocate of dialogue and a proponent of international law”.
