In the coming legislative period, the Federal Government and the Bundestag will need to redefine the scope of Germany's responsibility in world politics. The potential for action of German foreign policy cannot be properly assessed without taking into consideration the new international...

India has risen internationally since the 1990s. The most important reasons for this success are its economic reforms since 1991 and new international constellations since the East-West conflict. Both have earned the country a significantly greater say on global issues, but India's rise is quite...

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to Berlin in May and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's upcoming trip to Germany come at a time of rapprochement between India and Pakistan. With their new initiative to reassume talks, the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad are...

The election to India's lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha), which took place in five phases between April 20 and May 20, 2004, resulted in three major surprises. First, contrary to all forecasts, the opposition Congress Party and its United Progressive Alliance (UPA) defeated the ruling...

The first meeting between India's new prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, on the periphery of the United Nations' General Assembly on September 24, 2004, served to foster the rapprochement between both countries that started in April 2003. Although no...

The tidal wave that originated near Indonesia's Sumatra island on 26 December 2004 killed more than 170,000 people in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, India, and the Maldives. International pledges to generously contribute to the reconstruction effort have inspired new hopes for...

The commencement of bus services between the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir on April 7, 2005, and the visit to India by the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf from April 16 - 18 have given a definite boost to the process of rapprochement between the two countries. In their joint final...

For the United States, India is an essential cornerstone of the future security architecture in Asia. On June 28, 2005, the US Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld and his Indian colleague, Pranab Mukherjee, signed the New Framework for the US-India Defense Relationship, which is supposed to put the...

At a remarkable dinner for three that took place in Washington on 27 September 2006, President Bush, backed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, once again urged Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf to take tougher action against terrorist bases in the border regions of Pakistan. However,...

Since January 2010, Pakistani security forces have arrested nearly a dozen leading figures of the Afghan Taliban. While these arrests have dealt a serious blow to the Taliban, Pakistan's leadership has not made any fundamental changes to its policy for dealing with insurgents. Pakistan still...