Rs. 10 million assistance for Pakistan

Kathmandu, 14 Aug.: Government offered Rs 10 million in assistance to Pakistan Friday in a show of support as the South Asian country suffers its worst flood in living memory.
The cabinet took the decision.
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Maoist lawmaker being airlifted to New Delhi for treatment

Kathmandu, 14 Aug.: Maoist lawmaker Ram Kumari Debi Yadav who suffered third degree burns Friday morning is being airlifted to New Delhi Saturday for treatment of third degree burns.
She survived a gas cylinder blast.
Evacuation by air ambulance Friday was hampered by bad weather.
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Another Gurkha soldier dead in Afghanistan

Kathmandu, 14 Aug.: One more unidentified Gurkha soldier serving in Afghanistan with British army died Thursday as he was undergoing treatment for wounds at a British hospital, the British embassy said.
The soldier was serving with the Gurkha Reinforcement Company 1st Battalion.
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New British envoy arrives

Kathmandu, 14 Aug.: Senior diplomat John Tucknott arrived Friday to take his assignment as ambassador succeeding Dr Andrew Hall who retired after completing a four-year stint in Nepal.
Tucknott, who joined the diplomatic service in 1977 was Director of Global Investment Conference-London 2010 before his latest appointment.
He also served as deputy chief of mission at the British embassy in Iraq from 2007 to 2009.
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Shyam Sharan under review

Kathmandu, 14 Aug.: ---demeanor Shyam Saran wore on his departure from Kathmandu should not obscure us to the success he believes he achieved during his three-day sojourn as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy, Maila Baje reports in Nepali Netbook.
. Notwithstanding the secrecy with which the former foreign secretary conducted himself, as far as the substance of his confabulations went, Saran succeeded in widening the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-Baburam Bhattarai rift – conceding nothing – in keeping with the original intent of the 12-point accord.
Contrary to expectations in many quarters, the former ambassador to Nepal was not on a mission to handpick the next prime minister. He wanted to throw down the dice once again in an effort to force the other two principal players, China and the United States, to make their next move. In a sense, he was on a mission to salvage his personal credibility. And to understand the mission, it becomes to understand the man.
Saran represents that face of India’s Nepal policy that has taken the hardest hit. The Sitaram Yechuris and S.D. Munis could have hollered at the top of their lungs forever on the wisdom of abandoning the monarchy. Without the pulling the Indian External Affairs Ministry firmly in their camp, Messrs. Y&M wouldn’t have stood a chance. Predilection and circumstances made Saran the perfect medium.
Emulating the perfect babu, Saran rose in the Ministry of External Affairs by playing all sides. He succeeded in wooing opposite personalities like A.P. Venkateshwaran and Muchkund Dubey with equal gusto, keeping his true self to himself. Working the media, he even succeeded in turning an upsetting appointment as ambassador to Myanmar into an act of energetic altruism.
Returned to power in 2004, the Congress-led government of Manmohan Singh merely confirmed its Bharatiya Janata Party-led predecessor’s decision to catapult Saran to the position of foreign secretary. His admirers on left, however, never lost faith in his ideological moorings. The Maoists on both sides of the border had to be stopped before they eroded the space of the mainstream communists.
Despite his own predilections against the monarchy as an historical anachronism, Saran as foreign secretary could not have pushed the MEA to make a final break and press the Maoist-Seven Party Alliance 12-point agreement. But External Affairs Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh’s disgraceful exit from the ministry on allegations of complicity in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal in Iraq, left the field open for Saran. After King Gyanendra helped shift South Asia’s geopolitical locus at the Dhaka summit in November 2005, Saran won over many skeptics.
The Manmohan Singh government, despite its reliance on the Indian left, needed more prodding. Governments come and go but the Indian nation would have to live with the consequences of any precipitous move, especially one entailing the abolition of an entire institution. With Singh having assumed direct charge over the MEA, Saran was well placed to present his case personally to the top man. King Gyanendra, familiar with Saran’s antecedents and antics as ambassador and after, excluded him from joining the palace deliberations with Karan Singh. Saran, who considered himself nothing less than a co-equal on that mission, was understandably irked. Once back home, he almost singlehandedly pulled India away from the twin-pillar policy by presenting to his government as a fait accompli the “mood” on Kathmandu’s streets.
Like some of his predecessors who had become foreign secretary after ambassadorial or No.2 stints at Lainchour, Saran was already seeing himself in larger-than-life hues. He had the added disadvantage of assuming charge of the MEA bureaucracy after the viceroyalty in Nepal. Exacerbating the megalomania was the fact that he worked directly under the prime minister until October 2006. Once Pranab Mukherjee became foreign minister, Saran’s glory days ended.
The Indian Administrative Service, eager to ensure its primacy over all things bureaucratic, rose up against Prime Minister Singh’s effort to get Saran a year-long extension. So he won appointment as the Prime Minister’s Office as a special representative. His media buddies lavished him with praise for the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and prophesied better things in his new brief: climate-change envoy.
Meanwhile, the new foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon – who like Saran superseded more experienced officers – gave a candid admission of how difficult his job had become as the MEA pulled in different directions under his predecessor. On Nepal, New Delhi’s tentativeness had become clearer. Every move in Nepal’s republican set-up was now a work in progress measurable against the Saran roadmap. By the time Menon became National Security Adviser, Saran had sunk deeper in conflict with State Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. There was little he could do but head for the PMO exit door.
With the prospect of irrelevance looming larger, Saran could no longer see his judgment questioned so widely. So he contrived the pretense that the centrality of the 12-point agreement – the weakening of the Nepalese Maoists – remained as workable as ever. The Nepal mission, Maila Baje understands, was largely drawn up at Saran’s own initiative.
So what’s the deal here? By appearing to prop up Dr. Bhattarai, Saran believes he can restrain Dahal from hobnobbing any further with royalists as well as Beijing. Should Dr. Bhattarai get the premiership, his own pro-Indian image would be an albatross around the Maoists’ neck making the prospect of a party split untenable. That way, the Americans, forced to deal with the Maoists as a single organization, would be less emboldened to play off the Indians and Chinese against one other.
The secret meetings that really counted for Saran were the ones with Dahal and Dr. Bhattarai. While reminding each of the commitments he had made during the 12-point agreement negotiations, Saran must have been explicit in spelling out his expectations as well as the cost of non-compliance. Dr. Bhattarai himself has added his voice – albeit still muffled – to the chorus against foreign interference, hasn’t he?
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NC convention results

KATHMANDU, Aug., 13: -
Initial results pouring in from Nepali Congress District Convention on Thursday show the establishment faction led by Acting President Sushil Koirala leading in the race with six (and counting) of its supporters winning the district presidency. The other four (and counting) districts have elected leaders supporting the faction led by Sher Bahadur Deuba as presidents. The party will gradually hold conventions in all other districts, where elections were cancelled, from Friday, The Kathmandu Post reports.

Elections in Lalitpur selected Deuba-supporter Madan Bahadur Amatya as the president of the party’s district committee. In Kathmandu, the election could not elect any one and the party has scheduled to hold a run-off election on Friday. In Bhaktapur, the election was postponed earlier. The party has already conducted conventions in 19 districts, while four of them elected Deuba supporters as the presidents.

Though the party had planned to hold elections in around 54 districts on Thursday, around 10 districts announced results as the Post went to press.

About seven districts cancelled it due to controversies and other reasons, 10 districts went for run-off polls, around the same number of districts were likely to announce results late in the night, while the rest of planned to announce the results after completing the vote count.

Though these district conventions are a run-up to the party’s 12th NC General Convention (GC) slated for Sept. 17-21, they do not add to the voters’ number (around 3,000) in the General Convention. The final district results, however, indicate which faction is likely to dominate the GC.

Party insiders observe that unlike in earlier conventions, the overall results of this year’s pre-convention polls, especially in the constituency-level, also reveal a new trend—growing share of “swing voters” comprising an inclusive group dominated by the youth.

This means they may “disrupt” the usual trend of voting exclusively along certain panels or factions “at least when it comes to selecting the 61 CWC members.”

“The new and young faces elected as representatives to the General Convention may vote for either Sushil or Deuba in the president’s post, but they will not stick to one panel while selecting the rest of the other 61 CWC members. This means there are greater chances of the party getting new and younger faces at the central level,” said NC youth leader Gagan Thapa.

NC leaders say a significant number of GC representatives (2,880) elected by earlier constituency-level elections are “unpredictable”. “They are independent and not the pocket voters of either Deuba or Sushil or any other candidate,” NC’s youth leader Ang Gelu Sherpa said.





Elected presidents

Bhojpur Bal Krishna Thapa (Sushil)

Chitwan Bikash Koirala (Sushil)

Tanahun Dhruba Wagley (Sushil)

Banke Dr. Arun Koirala (Sushil)

Bardiya Sanjaya Gautam (Sushil)

Surkhet Tapta Bahadur Bista (Sushil)

Dadeldhura Karna Bahadur Malla (Deuba)

Kanchanpur Bahadur Singh Thapa (Deuba)

Lalitpur Madan Amatya (Deuba)

Syangja Kamal Pangeni (Deuba)

Vote tally

Sushil Faction 14 (earlier) + 6 (Thursday)

Deuba Faction 4 (earlier) + 4 (Thursday)

Independent 01
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