Rebels attempt to overrun police post

Kathmandu, 22 Aug: Tarai rebels hurled 10 socket bombs at a police post in Shibnagar, Rautahat, in a failed attempt to overrun it at 8.30 at night Thursday.
Ashok Raya Yadav, 20, who was injured in an exchange of gunfire, has been arrested; he was among 15 rebels injured in the 30-minute gun-battle.
There were no police casualties.
Violence continues unabated in the south bordering India.
Two rebels were injured when bombs exploded at the rented house of a police officer in Janakpur Thursday evening.
The activists of Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha were injured as they were assembling bombs.
Nnnn

Raghab Lal Baidhya appointed attorney general

Kathmandu, 22 Aug: Raghab Lal Baidhya has been appointed attorney general—the chief legal advisor of the Maoist-led government.
Baidhya resigned as an appellate court judge before taking up his new assignment.
Nnnn


1,000 still missing in Saptakosi floods; other details

Kathmandu, 22 Aug: Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police continued search, rescue and relief work in flood-hit areas of Sunsari Friday after Saptakosi embankment bust five days ago.
Sunsari CDO Durga Bhandari said water-level is receding and efforts continue to end relief operations Friday.
The river has changed course and is now flowing through six villages 1.5 kms away from the original course.
Over 3,000 persons are still missing are out of contact.
Diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia have broken out in 14 relief camps and flood hit areas.
Seventy percent of the water of the flooded Kosi river has entered villages in Sunsari breaching embankments, a government study said.
Crops planted in 10,000 hectares of land have been destroyed.
The flooded continues to damage a spur while three spurs need immediate repair, the study said.
MJF has asked Prime Minister Prachanda to form a high-level committee to pin responsibility for negligence leading to the dam burst.
The government chief, while calling for international assistance for reconstruction and relief Thursday, said the flood was ‘one of the most tragic events in the history of disasters’.
Nepal Army has donated five million rupees for flood victims.
Two Nepali water resources experts who preferred anonymity said India deliberately neglected the upkeep of the five-decade old Kosi barrage on the Nepal-India border as it has lost its utility for New Delhi.
Unconcerned with death and devastation, New Delhi wanted to give Nepal government a lesson that it’s time to construct a Kosi high dam on the upper reaches of the river to control it, they said.
King Birendra earned Indira Gandhi’s ire when he told Newsweek Nepalis ‘felt cheated’ on Kosi.
In similar vein, for the first time Nepal’s prime minister said the Kosi was a ‘historic mistake’
Prachanda made the comment while inspecting the devastation caused by Kosi this week.
President Dr Ram Baran Yadav Thursday told protesting student leaders of eight unions Thursday an unequal treaty with India was the cause of the devastation caused by Kosi, radio and published newspaper reports said.
India won’t take the comments in positive vein to review the treaty as called by Prachanda.
Nnnn





PM Prachanda heads a 11-member China team

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 22 Aug: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda will head a 11-member team that will participate in Sunday’s closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Prachanda leaves on his first foreign tour with Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara and side, Sita, and returns home Wednesday.
Chief Secretary Bhoj Raj Acharya and Foreign Secretary Gyan Chand Acharya are members of the team.
‘The prime minister is going for the Olympics concluding ceremony and has no political agenda. The visit is not a break from the tradition. Mahara was quoted in The Himalayan Times as saying.
He would have gone to India or Bangladesh or any country had the Olympics been held there, the newspaper quoting Mahara said.
. The prime minister will ask his Chinese counterpart to extend the Beijing-Lhasa railway network to the border town of Khasa and will discuss the possibility of extending the an oil pipeline from Lhasa to the border, Annapurna Post said quoting an unnamed foreign ministry official.
Prachanda will seek the relaxation of control along the Nepal-Tibet border reinforced after Free Tibet demonstrations in Tibetans in Nepal.
The prime minister will also ask China to construct the strategic Jomsom-Beni and Rasuwagahi- Sanrubesi roads linking Nepal and Tibet.
Prachanda will also ask Beijing to construct two hydel plants to meet severe power shortage.
Efforts are ongoing to arrange a meeting with President Hu Jintao.
Nnnn

Skeleton govt. being formed Friday

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 22 Aug: A skeleton government is being formed Friday after CPN (Maoist), CPN-UML and MJF one day earlier agreed on a power-sharing formula and a code of conduct for ruling parties.
The cabinet will take full shape after the prime minister returns from China Wednesday.
The code says government will mobilize security agencies on consensus as Maoists take charge of defence ministry and CPN-UML the home ministry.
Altogether nine ministries- defence, finance, peace and reconstruction, information and communication, culture, tourism and civil aviation, labour and transport, housing and rural development, land reforms and management and law and parliamentary—have been set aside for CPN (Maoist) in a power-sharing deal.
CPN-UML has control of six ministries—home, local development, water resources, forest and soil conservation, youth and sports and industry.
MJF has been allocated four ministries—foreign, physical planning, agriculture and supply.
Housing are rural development, youth and sports and supply will be independent ministries created after bifurcation.
There was no agreement on the post of deputy prime minister sought by all three parties; four ministries have been set seaside for four fringe parties in a seven-party government.
Besides Dr Baburam Bhattarai and Ram Bahadur Thapa “ Badal”, Maoists have decided to appoint Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Deb Gurung ministers of communication and law and justice respectively in the skeleton ministry.
A political coordination committee will direct the government.
The three-party alliance described the new coalition a ’national united government’.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Bamdeb Gautam will likely head the UML government team; Chairman Upendra Yadav will lead he MJF team in government.
Nnnn

Congress threatens to boycott CA

Pokhara, 21 Aug: Nepali Congress (NC) central committee member Dr Shekhar Koirala on Thursday said his party would walk out of the CA if the leftists alliance tries to draft the constitution by sidelining democratic forces, Kulchandra Neupane reports in The Kathmandu Post.
“NC lawmakers will be compelled to resign en masse from the CA if the left alliance tries to draft the constitution in favour of leftists by bulldozing NC’s democratic norms,” Koirala said.
“Maoists have taken democratic forces as their main foes immediately after the implementation of republic in the country.”
Another NC central member Dr Prakash Sharan Mahat, said the party was compelled to work with Maoists due to the former king’s wrong deeds.
“Maoists needed Nepali Congress to abolish monarchy,” he said, adding,” They threw us out after the implementation of a republic.”
Nnnn