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CJI recuses from hearing Italian marine's plea

Italian marines Latore Massimiliano (left) and Salvatore Girone (right) are escorted by Indian police outside a court in Kollam, on May 25, 2012. The two Italian marines have been charged with killing two fishermen who were allegedly mistaken for pirates and shot dead from an Italian oil tanker Enrica Lexie off the Kerala coast. (Getty Images/AFP file photo)

NEW DELHI: With the EU turning a cold shoulder to a visit offer by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India will wait for the 28-nation body to take the next step, even as India intensifies its ties with individual European nations."The EU has put a bilateral issue over multilateral engagement,” said high level sources in government. "They should take the next step.' There are indications that trade talks between the two sides may be initiated as a way to overcome the current awkwardness.Modi's first visit to Europe in April will cover France and Germany but skip Brussels. The EU refused to respond to a visit request by India a couple of months ago, which prompted India to cancel any plans by Modi to visit Brussels. Sources said while the EU's top leadership, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and Jean Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission , had signaled their interest in the summit, the foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini was opposed to it.As former Italian foreign minister, she has been deeply critical of India on the issue of the criminal case against two Italian marines.Since the last India-EU summit in 2012, both sides have stayed away from top level formal engagement. This in itself was unusual, given that the practice has been to hold annual summits. Modi met the former EU chief, Herman van Rompuy in a pull-aside meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Brisbane in November, which was the first time the idea of a summit in 2015 was mooted.Both sides have been struggling for years now to complete a broad-based free trade agreement. The India-EU FTA has been held up over EU demands for lower tariffs on auto components and wines, while India has had no success in persuading EU to allow more temporary work visas for Indian nationals.The Modi government is seen as being more pro-trade than the previous UPA, but there is no indication they will accede to all of EU's demands. The summit would have given both sides an opportunity to work on both multilateral (FTA talks) as well as bilateral (marines) issues.The refusal to the Indian summit, say officials, is likely to affect the EU a lot because India has been focusing on engaging individual countries thus far, having found it tough going with the EU. The EU, say sources here, just made itself a little more irrelevant to India.