INDIA: India's newly elected Congress party-led administration faces immediate challenging security, foreign policy and counter insurgency-related problems that will seriously test its mettle.
Talks with Pakistan are due to begin later this month on the deadlocked issue of disputed Jammu and Kashmir state, confidence-building measures on nuc- lear weapons and a host of other contentious issues that keep the neighbours, who came close to war two years ago, in a constant state of military readiness.
Mr Vajpayee began the peace process with Pakistan's President Musharraf earlier in the year, but substantive talks were postponed till after the Indian elections.
Unresolved territorial problems with China, over which the two fought a border war four decades ago, are up for a fresh round of dialogue in Beijing at the end of the month.
Alongside, the US is expected to reinforce its fledgling security partnership with India and to begin, once again, pressuring a reluctant India to dispatch peace- keeping troops to Iraq ahead of its withdrawal from the war-torn country in June. Under pressure from Washington last July India, was on the verge of sending an army division to Iraq.
Ongoing insurgencies raging in Kashmir and north-eastern India and badly-needed military re- forms, particularly the appointment of a chief of defence staff that was agreed over two years ago, are some of the other pending issues requiring immediate government attention.
On almost all these matters, the Congress whilst in opposition had opposed Mr Vajpayee's initiatives at trying to resolve them. But analysts said that now it was in government its approach would be governed by a different, more realistic dynamics.
