Friday, January 18, 2013

Mongolian foreign minister calls on President Mukherjee

New Delhi, Jan.17 (ANI): Mr. Lu Bold, Foreign Minister of Mongolia called on President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan on January 16.

The President welcomed him and recalled the last visit of HE Mr. Bold to India as Defence Minister in February 2009. He referred to the ancient civilizational ties that link India and Mongolia as also our shared democratic values. Our common heritage and the Buddhist religion unite our peoples. He recalled that over the centuries, our people have had close ties in trade and close intellectual discourse. President stressed that both nations should build on this historical legacy for their mutual benefit.

The President noted with appreciation the cooperation between Mongolia and India in the United Nations and other international fora.

The Mongolian Foreign Minister warmly reciprocated the President’s words and described India as a long standing friend and partner of Mongolia both in bilateral cooperation as well as in multilateral fora. He appreciated India’s assistance over the decades and said that Mongolia considers India the ‘spiritual home’ of the Mongolians, as a valued third neighbour that has stood by Mongolia in its developmental efforts. (ANI)

Greenpeace applauds Bharti Airtel for launching Sustainability Report

New Delhi, Jan.17 (ANI): Greenpeace India has welcomed the sustainability report launched by Bharti Airtel last week, terming it a stepping stone towards corporate sustainability.

Greenpeace India and lakhs of mobile consumers across India had been demanding Airtel to take leadership in cleaning up the telecom sector for past two years.

“We appreciate and congratulate Bharti Airtel for taking the long awaited step towards sustainability with the launch of this report. This is a landmark step towards creating a cleaner and sustainable telecom ecosystem in the country,” said Mrinmoy Chattaraj, Campaigner, Greenpeace India.

“Now that Bharti Airtel has taken leadership towards sustainability, we demand other companies to follow suit and roll out their sustainability plans,” Chattaraj added.

Bharti Airtel in its ongoing dialogue with Greenpeace India has assured of even more detailed and concrete sustainable action plan in coming months. Greenpeace India further demands the telecom giant to set up progressive emission reduction targets, as per the Green Telecom Directive2, by the year 2015 and 2020, while making long term investment plan in renewable energy sources for their growing telecom tower infrastructure and lead the low carbon race.

Greenpeace has been engaging with the telecom sector in general and Bharti Airtel in particular to focus on managing its energy and carbon by substantially shifting its power generation for network operations to renewable sources, and to proactively advocate for economy-wide policies that combat climate change and increase the use of renewable energy.

Last year, Greenpeace had released the report “Enabling Clean Talking3”, an economic and environmental road map for implementation of the progressive Green Telecom Directive issued by the Department of Telecom. (ANI)