International and Bilateral Issues:

Russia is awaiting India's reply to its proposal for finding a way out of tough Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) rules on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) equipment and technology.
Russia has offered to host an ENR unit on its soil and offered shares to India. This formula will enable Russia to “comply with its obligation to Indian friends and not violate international obligations with respect to non-proliferation,”
Of the three ENR majors, France has offered verbal comfort, the U.S. is non-committal and Russia has come up with this proposal after the NSG, despite hectic lobbying by India and Turkey, adopted new guidelines for export of sensitive nuclear technology this June.
The next two reactors planned for Kudankulam (in Tamil Nadu) would not come under the Liability Law which imposed additional costs on equipment suppliers.
The envoy said India and Russia might sign up to nine agreements including in the fields of military, energy and trade during the Prime Minister's visit.

A sense of relief swept over diamond traders in Gujarat on Wednesday after the Shenzhen court in China acquitted 11 of the 22 Indian diamond traders detained there on charges of smuggling. A majority of the accused were from the State.
Many traders felt the Indians had been awarded comparatively light sentences, considering that an Australian was sentenced to 14 years in jail.
“Thankful to China for acting on my request of speeding the judicial process for 22 Indians imprisoned there for two years,” said Mr. Modi, who visited China last month for improving trade relations.
Mr. Modi said he had taken up the case of the Indians with the Chinese authorities “purely on humanitarian grounds.”

In the midst of the 2008 crisis, Asia recovered more rapidly than the rest of the world. If there is another downtrend in the economy, the experience already gathered must come in handy.
Asia must take this opportunity to build a new pattern of growth, showing that long-term, sustainable development requires equity, fairness and investment in human capital with the decent work approach and not a race to the bottom
Asia could play a very important role, particularly in the G20. China, India, Indonesia, Australia, Korea — together these countries could coordinate and make the Asian experience a direction in which the world should be going
One cannot reduce poverty by simply moving people from extreme poverty to a little above that.
Policy must place employment, both quantity and quality, at the heart of reinvigorating economic growth.
The concept till now was that high levels of growth defined the success of macro economic policy, but high levels of growth do not translate into jobs
Social protection can support economic performance, even-out fluctuations, support business, social confidence and stability and the ILO has insisted that investments in social protection have to be seen as an investment in human capital and not as a cost, since it was easy to cut budgets on the social side.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Wednesday confirmed he was in discussions with China to jointly develop a new and safer kind of nuclear reactor.
Mr. Gates has largely funded a Washington-based company, TerraPower, which is developing a Generation IV reactor that can run on depleted uranium.
TerraPower says its travelling wave reactor would run for decades on depleted uranium and produce significantly smaller amounts of nuclear waste than conventional reactors.
He said they would also benefit from an ability to simulate earthquake and tidal wave conditions.

India has sought at least 20 per cent stake in the prolific Sakhalin -3 oil and gas fields
Interestingly, ONGC Videsh (OVL) has been raising the issue of stake in the Far East Russian oil and gas fields since the last five years but Moscow has not responded to its overtures favourably.
India suggested swapping LNG imports of Japan from Qatar with the LNG that could be available from Russian sources like Sakhalin.

India is in talks with Persian Gulf nations, including Qatar, for increased supplies of LNG and with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for additional supplies of crude oil
20 {+t} {+h} World Petroleum Congress at Doha
India also expressed interest in Oman's downstream projects, consultancy and management, upstream opportunities and gas supply to India.
About the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), the Minister said that the process for award of exploration blocks under the IX bid round would be concluded soon.
Our companies are also looking for investment opportunities in LNG plants in producer nations. Qatar has been our long time partner country in this area.

New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) was conceptualised by the Government of India, during 1997-98 to provide an equal platform to both Public and Private sector companies in exploration and production of hydrocarbons with Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) as a nodal agency for its implementation.
It was introduced to boost the production of oil and natural gas
Recently, bidding process was completed in NELP-IX. Till 2010, 8 rounds of NELP have been completed.
India is the fifth largest consumer of primary energy and the third largest consumer of oil in the Asia–Pacific region after China and Japan.
Of the 26 sedimentary basins identified in India, so far, only 20% of the total area has been well explored.
With the introduction of the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), introduction of the much-needed capital and state-of-the-art technology to exploration sector could be made possible.