With the transition period of the U.K.’s exit from the EU (or Brexit) ending this month, the Boris Johnson government is beginning to firm up its partnerships outside its region, and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s Delhi visit came with a declaration of immediate and longer-term goals for the India-U.K. relationship. His visit was also to prepare the way for Prime Minister Johnson’s India visit, as the chief guest at Republic Day, and to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the U.K. to the G-7 and the Climate Change (COP26) summits next year. Mr. Johnson will be the first head of government to visit India after the spread of COVID-19; this will also be his first bilateral visit anywhere after Brexit, signalling the importance India and the U.K. give to this chapter in ties. In what he called a “ten-year” road map for relations, Mr. Raab discussed with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Mr. Modi the upgrading of the 2004 India-U.K. Strategic Partnership to a
The U.S.’s decision to impose sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of the S-400 missile defence system from Russia further complicates the already troubled relationship between the two NATO members. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this week that the Trump administration was obliged to impose sanctions on Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, passed in 2017 and aimed at discouraging third countries from buying weapons from Russia. Earlier, the U.S. had suspended Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet programme which Washington feared would be undermined by the Russian system. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called the sanctions “an attack on Turkey’s sovereignty”. The U.S. decision will have implications for India as well, which has also ordered the S-400. The Trump administration has been non-committal on giving India a sanctions waiver. In the case of Turkey, Washington had said it would not invoke sanctions if Ankara did not activate
International sport at the best of times causes anxiety and apprehension. Now there is the added fear of contracting a deadly virus far away from home and family.
