At UN, India vows to help produce virus vaccine for world
Associated PressUNITED NATIONS — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to help the world produce and deliver potential coronavirus vaccines while making no mention Saturday of the heavy toll the pandemic has taken on his own country, where the enormous population has suffered among the highest numbers of cases and deaths in the world. Modi’s remarks to the U.N. General Assembly — pre-recorded because the gathering is virtual this year — also said nothing about growing tensions with neighboring Pakistan, whose prime minister, Imran Khan, devoted much of his speech Friday to assailing India, leading to a sharp exchange between the two countries’ diplomats in the Assembly hall. “India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting this crisis,” Modi said, adding that his country would also help others boost their capacity to provide cold storage for the potential inoculations. India on Friday said Khan was spreading “lies, misinformation, warmongering and malice” as the two countries traded barbed remarks in the Assembly hall, where rules allow nations to respond to one another’s speeches. In recent weeks, India and China have accused each other of sending soldiers into each other’s territory in an area near glacial Pangong Lake and have firing warning shots for the first time in 45 years, raising the specter of a full-scale military conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations with the world’s largest populations.