THREE PARTIES AGREE TO PRESENT FULL BUDGET

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Maoists Monday abandoned their strategy to stall the caretaker government from presenting the annual budget 2010/11 already delayed by four months agreeing with the NC and UML to present it in parliament Friday.
Agreement was reached at the third round meet of the Big Three in Gokarna Monday; the parties have agreed to meet again Thursday one day ahead of the budget presentation to work out details.
He parties formed a task force of three former finance ministers—Dr Baburam Bhattarai (Maoist), Dr Ram Sharan Mahat (NC) and Bharat Mohan Adhikari (UML) to work out details of the budget to be presented with understanding to avoid a financial crisis.
The parties agreed no new policies and programmes will be presented by the Caretaker government led by Madhav Kumar Nepal.
Government said it was running out of money to run day-to-day affairs of government and went ahead with plans to present the annual budget Friday even if Maoists prevented its presentation.
Maoists adopted similar tactics last year as well after sitting in the opposition bench to protest the reinstatement by President Dr Ram Baran Yadav of sacked Army
Chief Gen. Rukmangud Katawal at the request of 18 political parties.
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17TH ROUND VOTE FOR PM ELECTION SUSPENDED

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Speaker Subash Nemwang suspended the 17th round election for prime minister Monday in four months citing special reason.
The supreme court division bench Wednesday drew the speaker’s attention to find
alternatives to elect a successor of Madhav Kumar Nepal who has been a caretaker government chief for more than four months.
The speaker has convened a meeting of parliament again on Friday after consulting parliament’s business advisory committee.
Parties differ on interpretations of the supreme court’s intervention.
NC, meanwhile, asked Nemwang Monday to declare Party Vice-president Ram Chandra Paudel elected prime minister unopposed.
Paudel is the only candidate in the race after Maoist Chairman Prachanda withdrew from the contest after the fourth round.
Ten small parties in parliament asked major parties not to stay neutral in the vote for government chief.
Maoists and UML have been staying neutral and Paudel hasn’t succeeded in collecting the required 301 majority vote in parliament.
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CABINET APPROVES NEW PASSPORT REGULATION

Kathmandu, 16 Nov. The cabinet Monday approved a new passport regulation
2010 as the government prepares to issue machine readable passports (MRPs).
The cabinet forwarded the regulation to the cabinet statutory committee for approval.
The regulation discourages issuance of new passports to replacement documents.
Clients will be charged double rate for acquiring passports in one week.
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29 HOURS LOAD-SHEDDDING A WEEK

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Load-shedding was increased to 29 hours a week from Wednesday following power shortage after the 70MW Mid-Marshyangdhi was shutdown for repairs for two weeks.
Power outage was two hours a day before the increase.
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PM NEPAL CHANGES PLANS, FLYING FOR RUSSIA

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal changed plans not to
travel abroad as a caretaker government chief and will leave for St. Petersburg, Russia, this week to attend a summit of nations of 13 tiger range countries.
Russian Prime MinisterVladimir Putin is attending the summit.
The cabinet Monday approved the premier’s travel plans.
Nepal didn’t attend the annual September session of the UN general session in New York.
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TRADE, COMMERCE, ECONOMY

ADBL RECORDS RS 271.9M NET PROFIT

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Agriculture Development Bank (ADBL) earned a net profit of Rs. 271.9 million in Q1 of the current fiscal year compared to Rs 256.8 million in the corresponding period the previous year.
Everest Bank Ltd. earned a net profit of Rs. 207.34 million in Q1 of the current fiscal year ending 17 October.
Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd. Registered a Rs 265.53 million in Q1 of th current fiscal—down from Rs 278.7 million in the corresponding period the previous year.
The joint venture bank grossed Rs175.8 million in the corresponding period the previous year.
Siddhartha Bank earned a net profit of Rs.75.7 million in Q1 of the current fiscal year whereas it earned Rs 63.4 million in the corresponding period the previous year.
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BOOST TO STOCK TRADING

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Nepal Central Depository and Clearing Company Ltd. is
being launched Tuesday by Nepse and 17 commercial banks.
Nepse and 17 commercial banks signed a memorandum of understanding to
launch the Rs 500 million company Monday.
Citizen Investment Trust (CIT) is signing the MoU Tuesday.
Nepse has majority 52.38 percent stake in the company; CIT has 15.22 percent shares; five commercial banks have 2.88 percent stake each while 12 commercial banks hold 1.5 percent shares each.
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ADBL BEING PRIVATIZED

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Cabinet Monday approved the sale of 30 percent shares of its
Holdings in the Agriculture Development Bank Ltd (ADBL) while retaining 21 percent stake.
Public holds 45 percent shares while employees have five percent stake in the
bank.
Government stake will be sold through auction.
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MAOIST PLENUM PREPARATIONS IN FINAL STAGE

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: With six days to go for the UCPN-Maoist’s sixth extended meeting, the party today said 85 per cent of preparations have been completed, The Himalayan Times reports.

“Just decoration work on the premises is remaining now,” said Maoist politburo member Shakti Basnet who is also a member of the main organising committee. “As many as 7,000 people including 5,500 leaders and party cadres from across the country will participate.”

The Maoists are holding their sixth plenum in Palungtar, Gorkha from November 21.

A nine-member main organising committee has been formed under the coordination of party’s general secretary Ram Bahadur Thapa. Standing committee member Top Bahadur Rayamajhi is the joint convener. Agni Sapkota, Hit Man Shakya, Hit Raj Pande, Shakti Basnet, Nanda Kishor Pun, Kul Prasad KC and Maheswor Dahal are members of the committee.

More than 70 temporary huts, and 100 others to be used as latrines, have been erected. Houses of local residents and unoccupied and public houses of Wards No 7, 8 and 9 of Palungtar VDC will be used for accommodation. According to Basnet, Rs 1.2 million will be spent every day on food. Three ponds have already been constructed for water. The party aims to collect Rs 10 million in total — Rs 2,000 from each participant as entry fee. Total cost for the programme has been estimated at Rs 21 million.
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MUDDLE OVER MEDAL

Kathmandu, 16 Nov.: Though the government hastily decided to confer the Mahaujjwal Rastradeep medal on visiting Saudi Arabian Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal on Monday morning, he could not receive the honor due to lack of preparedness, KoshRaj Koirala reports in Republica.

Prince Talal has said that he will visit Nepal again to receive the medal, according to senior government officials.

When Prince Talal landed at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) on Saturday evening on a three-day visit to Nepal, government officials were still in confusion as they had not been informed about any decision about the medal.

Delegates accompanying Prince Talal had inquired with MoFA officials present at the airport about the medal shortly after landing. When they learnt that there was no such preparations on the part of the Nepal government, Talal´s aides reportedly expressed their displeasure.

Sources said that some senior MoFA officials later rushed to Hyatt Regency Hotel, where the prince was staying, to apprise him of the technical problems that caused the government´s indecisiveness over conferring the medal.

Prince Talal, who is described by Forbes Magazine as the 19th richest person in the world, reportedly conveyed his displeasure and said that he would fly on to Bhutan and then directly back home on Sunday, cancelling meetings with President Dr Ram Baran Yadav, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other ministers scheduled for Monday.

Government officials said Prince Talal confirmed his visit to Nepal after Nepali Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Hamid Ansari reportedly assured him that the Nepal government would confer a medal and a doctorate degree on him. MoFA had communicated the assurance to both the Prime Minister´s Office and the Home Ministry some months ago.

Nevertheless, preparations for the medal function could not gather momentum as Home Minister Bhim Rawal, who is chairman of the Decorations Committee, was not positive about the idea, saying that Nepal did not have any precedent of honoring foreign nationals who had not made a substantial contribution to this country.

Talking to media persons after a meeting with Prince Talal at Hotel Yak and Yeti, Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala disclosed that she decided to meet Talal after she learnt that the prince had taken the matter seriously. “We did not want to let this issue harm our bilateral relations,” she told journalists. “I explained to him the technicalities and difficulties that hindered the decision to confer the medal. We are to be blamed for this.”

Though the cabinet approved the designs for medals last year, they are yet to be produced for lack of a necessary budget. “The delay in unveiling the new budget for the current fiscal year has curtailed our effort to get the medals ready on time,” said a top government official, asking to be unnamed.

Officials said the government started preparations for conferring the medal only on Sunday evening. A cabinet meeting held Monday morning took a formal decision to confer the Mahaujjwal Rastradeep medal on the Saudi prince.

Talking to media after the cabinet meeting, Minister for Information and Communication and government spokesperson Shankar Pokharel said the cabinet has decided to recommend Talal´s name to the President for the medal. “We hope this would further strengthen relations between Nepal and Saudi Arabia,” said Pokharel.

There are three orders of government awards, namely Nepal Ratna, Rastra Gaurab and Rastradeep. While Nepal Ratna is given exclusively to Nepali nationals who help uphold the image and dignity of the country, Rastra Gaurab is given to heads of the state of other countries or to Nepali nationals who help promote the image and dignity of Nepal in the international arena.
The Rastradeep award, meant for honoring both Nepali and foreign nationals for their contribution to promoting Nepal´s image, dignity and interests, has a total five categories.

While Mahaujjwal Rastradeep ranks top in the category, Ujjwal Kirtimaya Rastradeep, Sukirtimaya Rastradeep, Kirtiman Rastradeep and Rastradeep are ranked second, third, fourth and fifth respectively.
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MAOISTS CLARIFY REASON FOR CHINA VISIT IN THE RISING NEPAL INTERVIEW

Accompanying his party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, chief of foreign affairs department of UCPN-Maoist, recently paid a visit to People’s Republic of China. During the visit, the Maoist leadership floated the idea about strategic agreement among Nepal, India and China, focusing on development. At the meantime, there have been speculations that the Maoist party is tilting towards China while its relations with India have run at the low level. Recently, India sent a letter to the government alleging the Nepali Maoists for imparting training to the Indian Maoists and even having relations with Muslim fundamentalists. Given this, Nandalal Tiwari of The Rising Nepal talked to Mahara about the real purpose of the China visit and the reasons for stagnant relations of the party with India.
Your party leadership made a visit to China recently. What was the main purpose of the trip?
The main purpose of the China visit was nothing but to participate in the Shanghai World Expo. China had selected our party chairman as one of the 100 leaders of the world for the visit. And our chairman had been invited almost a year back. We were thinking of visiting in May, but we could not make due to our domestic affairs. As the Expo was about to be over, we went to observe the Expo.
At the sidelines of the visit to the Expo, we also had brief meeting with the Chinese communist party leaders and held political discussion. However, the political discussion was not the focus of the visit.
During the meeting with Chinese leaders, your party chairman proposed for strategic agreement among Nepal, China and India. Was there some sort of such understanding on it?
No, not any understanding as such, which may hint at some other meaning, was made. The fact is, we should maintain good relations with India and move forward, although there are some contradictions in our country’s relations with India and that India has some shortcoming in this regard. We have been raising these issues. Yet, we never aim at inviting contradiction between India and China. Instead, the objective of the role of our country has been and should be to maintain good relations between our immediate neighbours.
Our country should be a bridge of good relations for both the neighbours to take benefit from both of them for our development, and for that it cannot have any special relation with either of the neighbors. This is what our concept is and for this, our chairman made a proposal. The Chinese leaders appreciated the proposal, and they said that they would also put forward the idea with India. They also urged us for the same. What should be understood here is no decision has been taken in this regard. Our chairman simply made a proposal of our concept.
Then, it is solely a strategy related to development?
Of course, it is related to development works. The strategy is not linked with politics as the countries have different political system as their interest. The proposal for strategic understanding is concentrated on development agenda.
You just now said that your party has some contradictions regarding relations with India. What sorts of contradictions are they?
It is, I think, known to all because Nepal’s political sector is not completely independent. It is entangled with Indian politics. Old political parties here have been in some way tilting to and dependent on Indian politics. It has been a tradition for long, and we want an end to this. As an independent and sovereign nation, Nepal should at least be able to make its political decision independently. This is our stand. We have been saying that our national sovereignty has been weak at this particular point. And India has been in this or that form interfering with our political decision. There is contradiction between Nepali people and the Indian rulers.
I don’t mean that we have contradiction with India as a whole. Indian people have different and also positive opinions about our country. Many Indian political parties hold the view that Nepal is an independent and sovereign nation and that India should not intervene in Nepal’s internal affairs. However, the present contradiction is due to the wrong perception of a section of Indian ruling class that looks after Nepal. For this, let me pick up just one example. Last year, when the Maoist-led government took steps with regard to the then army chief, all the 22 parties here made a sudden polarisation, and India has interest behind it. This should not have been so.
India has recently alleged your party of imparting training to the Indian Maoists. Indian ambassador to Nepal Rakesh Sood has recently submitted a letter to the government with the allegation. How have you taken it?
First of all, our party is quite astonished by the letter, with the way and the intention the letter has been sent. The allegations are 100 per cent false. There is no ounce of truth in the accusation. The letter has been dispatched with ill -intention. We are awe-stricken as to how the Indian government could write so ill-willed letter.
I must stress on this that we have never trained the Indian Maoists, nor have they approached us for the purpose. And there is no possibility for all this. As a communist party, we have ideological relations with them, but not any organisational or practical relations. During people’s war, we, of course, had some sort of relations. But as we entered the peace process with a view to competing the revolution, our relations with many Maoist parties of the world including the Indian ones severed as they have disagreed with our way and they have a very sharp criticism over our party. We, on our part, have been putting forward our views with them that as far as possible peaceful way of transformation should be tried. Because of this, we have no relation regarding current political matter. And, as such, there can be no possibility of our working relation with them. We are moving forward through the peace process. Moreover, we have been saying theoretically for long that revolution can neither be imported nor exported. We made this point clear even when we were carrying out people’s war. However, many suspected that we were mobilised by some other country. Revolution is something that should be carried out by the people. If we see things from this angle, we don’t see any need to say that we have no relations with the Indian Maoists.
Now, there is another allegation-that we have relations with Lashkar-e-Taiba. This is so utterly impossible thing. We did not have any relations with them in the past; neither is there any possibility of such relations at present and future. We are far different from them theoretically.
We have nothing to say about the letter except for expressing our shock. We are really stunned. Our party chairman has already refuted the baseless allegations.
It is now obvious that your party’s relation with India is not good. What are the reasons?
There is only one reason that we want to stand as an independent political force in the country. We believe that Nepal should be made by the Nepali people themselves, and not by instructions from a particular country. We fought the people’s war for revolution and the people have now made us the largest party. We want to establish as an independent political force, which India does not want. Shortcoming on the part of India, therefore, lies in that country’s ruling class’s unwillingness to let us develop as an independent force. This is Indian ill-intention, and its outcome is the letter. India should correct this shortcoming. When we have an environment here to play our role independently, we will have better relations with India. India should accept the fact that we are the force mandated by the people. There may be other issues of contradiction as well including the ones related to the treaties and the border, but the vital one is the ill-intention.
Have you made any efforts to improve the relations?
Yes, we have been. It is not that our relations with India are cut off. We have been regularly holding discussions with political and diplomatic figures of India. We still have political, official and people-to-people relations with our southern neighbour.nnnn

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