NEW DELHI: India on Friday announced seven days of state mourning after the death of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, one of the architects of the country’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s.

Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 late Thursday evening at a hospital in New Delhi. He will also be accorded a state funeral.

“As a mark of respect for the departed dignitary, it has been decided that seven days of state mourning will be observed throughout India,” the Indian government said in a statement Friday, with mourning running until January 1.

“It has also been decided that the state funeral will be accorded to late Dr. Manmohan Singh,” it said, adding that the national flag will also be flown at half-mast.

India’s cricket team battling hosts Australia in the fourth Test took to the ground Friday with black arm bands to show respect for Singh.

The official date for the state funeral was not immediately announced, but a senior member of the Congress party suggested it would be held on Saturday.

The former premier was an understated technocrat who was hailed for overseeing economic boom in Asia’s fourth-largest economy in his first term but his second stint ended with a series of major corruption scandals, slowing growth, and high inflation.

The unpopularity of Singh in his second term, and a lackluster leadership by Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi, the current leader of opposition in the lower house, led to the first landslide victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.

Born in 1932 in the mud-house village of Gah, in what is now Pakistan, Singh studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in the vast nation and never held elected office before taking the nation’s highest office.

He won scholarships to attend both Cambridge, where he obtained a first in economics, and Oxford, where he completed his doctorate.

Singh worked in a string of senior civil service posts, served as a central bank governor and also held various jobs with global agencies such as the United Nations.

He was tapped in 1991 by then Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to reel India back from the worst financial crisis in its modern history

In his first term Singh steered the economy through a period of nine-percent growth, lending the country the international clout it had long sought.

He also sealed a landmark nuclear deal with the US that he said would help India meet its growing energy needs.

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Slovakia had offered to be a “platform” for possible peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, nearly three years since the launch of Moscow’s offensive.
Putin told a televised press conference Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico “said that if there are any negotiations, they would be happy to provide their country as a platform.”
He added that Russia was “not against it,” praising Slovakia’s “neutral position.”
Fico, one of the few European leaders to maintain ties with the Kremlin, met with the Russian president in Moscow on December 22.
His visit came despite Western efforts to isolate Putin and present a united front in support for Kyiv.
Slovakia, an EU and NATO member, has already halted military aid to Ukraine since autumn 2023 under Fico’s government, and called for peace talks.
Fico has accused Kyiv of jeopardizing his country’s supply of Russian natural gas, on which it is heavily dependent.
Ukraine has said it will not renew a contract expiring at the end of this year to allow Russia gas to transit its country toward Europe, and no feasible alternative has yet been found.
Ukrainians “are already punishing Europe by ending the contract to supply our gas,” Putin said, adding that no new contract could be reached “in three or four days.”
But he suggested he was ready to supply gas to the EU, possibly via the Yamal-Europe pipeline that transits Poland.
The prospect of peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine that began in February 2022 has grown since the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House.
Trump has vowed to push for a quick deal to halt the fighting when he takes office in January.
That has sparked fears in Kyiv and Europe that Ukraine could be pushed to make concessions to Moscow.
Putin reiterated his vow that his country would achieve “all the objectives in Ukraine.”
“This is our number one task,” he said, warning that Moscow was ready to again use its latest-generation Oreshnik missile, first fired in a strike last month.
Putin has repeatedly threatened to strike “decision-making centers” in Kyiv in retaliation for its use of Western-supplied long-range missiles to hit targets in Russia.
He also claimed Thursday that in 2021, US President Joe Biden offered to “push back” Ukraine’s entry into NATO — a move urgently sought by Kyiv but that Putin considers an unacceptable threat.
“In 2021, the current President Biden offered exactly that: push back Ukraine’s NATO membership by 10 to 15 years, because it was not yet ready.”
“I answered reasonably that ‘Yes, today it is not ready. But you will prepare it for it and you will accept it.’“
But for Russia, “What is the difference — today, tomorrow or in 10 years?“