Table of Contents
PMO
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned home this evening after completing his
three-day tour to China.
• Prime Minister Modi and the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, held four rounds of
one-on-one meetings and exchanged views on a range of issues of bilateral and global
importance.
• Both nations agreed to build a peaceful, balanced and stable relationship
• Strategic guidance has been to their militaries to strengthen communication.
• Trade and investment
• Enhancing people-to-people contact
• Climate change
• Digital empowerment
• Terrorism
• Both the leaders also agreed to hold more such informal dialogues between the two
countries.
Defence
• Indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft Tejas has successfully fired an airto-air
beyond visual range (BVR) missile.
• Major milestone achieved
• Tejas has demonstrated its overall capability as an effective combat jet, and inched closer to receive final operational clearance.
• This will expedite issuance of the Final Operational Clearance to the aircraft
developed by state-run HAL and DRDO.
• When we talk about, capability of indigenous equipment, the Make in India story, around 90% warship construction work is done in India including the integration of warship.
• And we also have set a target of making military equipment in India of 1.70 lakh crore rupees that is the target set for 2025 and I think it can be achieved by the present governance.
AIIMS
• Healthcare services at AIIMS in New Delhi remained affected for the third day today as resident doctors stuck to their demand to suspend a senior doctor who had allegedly slapped one of their colleagues.
• Only the emergency and ICU services functioned and routine surgeries remained cancelled.
• The senior doctor, who heads a department has tendered a written apology and proceeded on leave on the directions of an internal probe panel.
CAATSA
• Trump Administration is keenly aware that punishing India to punish Russia under a new sanctions law would be a grave mistake.
• If India becomes collateral damage in Washington’s desire to make Russia pay
for its sins then the last 20 years progress is out of the door forever.
• 1998: India’s nuclear tests
• US sanctions were applied on India
• It took a decade of hard work to fix the cracks between India and USA.
• 2018 US National Security Strategy envisions an expansion of defence and security cooperation with India and welcomes its “emergence as a leading global power.”
• Now what is going to happen is that at one time USA is calling India a Strategic Partner and on the other hand it is going to apply sanctions on it.
• This time sanctions will hurt USA more than India.
• President Trump is not happy to sign Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
• Trump said it “will drive China, Russia and North Korea much closer together.”
• Secretary of Defence James Mattis: argued strongly in favour of exempting India from CAATSA in front of the Senate. Sanctioning India, Vietnam and Indonesia would eventually “paralyse” the US and reward Russia, he said.
• Chief of the Pacific Command (PACOM), Admiral Philip Davidson said the same thing.
• CAATSA primarily targets Russia but it ropes in any country that trades with Russia’s defence and intelligence sectors, which India does.
• New Delhi is in advanced talks with Moscow to buy the S-400 air defence system, besides frigates and helicopters, all of which can potentially trigger sanctions.
• Mattis has requested the US Congress to
tweak CAATSA and give the State Department the authority to grant a waiver.
• Another option CAATSA provides is to delay the imposition of sanctions for 180 days – which the administration can do without going back to the Congress — and keep renewing the 180-day relief indefinitely.
• The reality is that India will continue to buy Russian arms for the foreseeable
future even as it diversifies purchases — the US is already India’s second largest
weapons supplier
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