UML MAOIST STANDNG COMMITTEES TO DISCUSS REMOVAL IN GOVT. RESHUFFLE

UML MAOIST STANDING COMMITTEES DISCUSS TO MAOIST CHANGE IN GOVT. TEAM UPDATE

Kathmandu, 28 July: Maoists standing committee meets later Thursday to discuss a proposal only to swear-in 12 proposed cabinet ministers immediately , fresh reports said.
The official installment of 12 state ministers will be put on hold for sometime, according to a proposal that will be discussed by Maoists Thursday.
The development came after an hour-long meeting between Premier Khanal and Maoist Chairman Prachanda
UML standing committee also meets later Thursday to discuss Maoist decision to change its government team to by led by Vice-chairman Narayan Kazi Shrestha.
Maoists and UML formed the communist majority government in February this year. standing committee
UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal leads the government.
UML standing committee has rejected the Maoist proposal for a team change putting Khanal in a quandary with his party opposing the Maoist move which is also opposed by main opposition NC.
Khanal Wednesday proposed only inclusion of cabinet ministers and not 12 state ministers also proposed by UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Prachanda was under pressure from his party to make its government team more representative by including more women, regions and ethnic groups.
NC and faction in UML opposed to Khanal argue a team change will hider formation of a national government.
Nnnn

LANDSLIDES BLOCK TRAFFIC BETWEEN NEPAL,TIBET

Kathmandu, 28 July: Landslides along 26 km section of Arniko Highway linking Tibet with Nepal have obstructed movement of traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles have been stranded on the only highway linking Nepal and Tibet from Bahrabishe in Nepal to Tatopani border.
Continuous heavy rainfall has hindered restoration of the highway as sections of the highway have also collapsed
Nnnn

FORMER SSP RANA, DIG SHAH SENT TO JAIL

Kathmandu, 28 July: The statement of Shambhu Bharati, Director of Bhagwati Traders, representative of London-based company that supplied armoured personnel carriers (APCs) for Nepal Police is being recorded at the special court Thursday.
He was sent to judicial custody Wednesday after the process of recording wasn’t completed Wednesday.
Former SSP Ravi Pratap Rana and DIG Ramesh Bikram Shah were sent to jail Wednesday by a special court after they failed to settle Rs.12.5 million and Rs 70 million bails respectively.
They were charged by CIAA in a Rs.280 million Darfur, Sudan, scam for the purchase of faulty APCs for Nepal Police peacekeepers with UN in the African state
Thirty-four senior police officers have been charged.
Nnnn


.COLONELS PROMOTED TO BRIGADIERS

Kathmandu, 28 July: Colonels Shumshere Thakuri, Purna Bahadur Silwal and Sarad Jumar Giri were promoted to brigadiers of Nepal Army by the cabinet Wednesday.
The recommendations of army headquarter for promotion of Brigadiers Ramesh Bista,Victor Rana and Mohan Bikram Shah to major general s were approved by the cabinet
Nnnn

NT TO EXPABD INTERCONNECTION TIES WITH FIVE MORE COUNTRIES

Kathmandu, 28 July: Nepal Telecommunications (NT) will develop direct interconnection links with five more countries this fiscal year, Managing Director Vishwanath Goel said.
Direct links are in the offing with Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and UAE.
Expatriate Nepalis there will benefit with better and cheaper services.
Nnnn


GOVT. IN DARK ON PROPOSED $3 BILLION INVESTMENT TO DEVELOP LUMBINI
Kathmandu, 28 July: Top officials, including those of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture, on Wednesday professed ignorance of the US $3 billion Lumbini Development Project deal between United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and China backed Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation (APECF) in the third week of June. The project aims to develop Lumbini as a ‘special development zone, AnillGiriwrites in The Kathmandu Post.
Ministry officials cast doubt over the modality of ‘Memorandum of Understanding in Support for the Lumbini Special Cultural Zone and Assistance Project for the Framework Design of Lumbini (Birthplace of Buddha) Special Development Zone (Nepal)’ and claimed Nepal government would not comply with a decision clinched without its consent.
Hong Kong-based NGO APECF promotes economic, social-cultural exchanges and cooperation worldwide. Chairman of UCPN (Maoist) Pushpa Kamal Dahal and former crown prince Paras Shah are its vice-chairmen.
The Ministry of Culture, through the Lumbini Development Trust, oversees Lumbini related projects. Any agreement with a foreign connection must be cleared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA). However, this nonce both ministries are in the dark. “We are direct stakeholders in Lumbini’s development, but we got to know through the media that an MoU was clinched in Beijing,” said Culture Secretary Modraj Dotel.
He added, “The agreement is not in standard format and I guess the highest UN bodies in Geneva and New York were also not informed. The MoU lacks transparency.” He said the MoU mentions Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism just once. “It does not say anything about the consent of Nepal government and concerned agencies.” Dotel said they would say ‘no’ if UNIDO and APECF come here to implement the deal.
A MoFA meeting on Wednesday concluded that Nepal government has nothing to do with a deal that ignores the host country, said ministry spokesman Durga Bhattarai. He added that the deal should have been a tripartie one.
Meanwhile, after the MoU signing, head of UNIDO’s China investment and technology promotion office Hu Yuandong said that the Lumbini project was in compliance with UNIDO’s principles of ‘economy, environment and employment’.
Nnnn

OPINION
A LANDING AS SAFE AS IT COULD BE


Kathmandu, 28 July: The leaders of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) seem to have settled their internal rifts with remarkable geniality – for now. The central committee meeting of the party Monday passed chairman Pushpa
Kamal Dahal’s political paper dividing organizational duties among the key protagonists flexing their muscles, Maile Baje writes in Nepali Netbook.
While the latest rejigging might not be enough to allow the party to focus on peace and the constitution – which Dahal’s document has called its main agenda – Maila Baje thinks it does allow the Maoists to deflect some of the blame for missing the next crucial national deadline on August 28.
According to Dahal’s proposal, senior vice-chairman Mohan Baidya will head the party’s organization department along with the disciplinary body while vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai will chair the parliamentary board and will be the prime minister candidate for the future government. Similarly, another vice-chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha will lead the party’s team in the current government complete with home portfolio until Bhattarai can take the top job at some unspecified future date. General secretary Ram Bahadur Thapa will oversee the military commission.
In the end, the much-ballyhooed Bhattarai-Baidya alliance, which saw Shrestha and Badal jump into the fray from their own vantage points, has ended up with Dahal staying put. Appearing to deconcentrate authority, he has in fact created an opportunity to play each rival off against the others.
Dahal knew his gambit would rile Prime Minister Jhal Nath Khanal and the Nepali Congress even before he got his rivals’ nods over the weekend. Both have not taken kindly to the Maoists’ effort at invoking extraterritorialism especially vis-à-vis the council of ministers.
Still, the settlement suits the other Maoist leaders just fine. Baidya and Bhattarai could rise above their ideological differences to challenge Dahal because they had other overriding imperatives. Baidya, in light of the all-round mockery Dahal’s pronouncements seem to be evoking within the nation, perceived the Chinese as being no less miffed.
Ever the man to publicly shun responsibility outside the party, Baidya sought to project Bhattarai as an alternative to Dahal. But only after ensuring a monumental geopolitical transformation behind the scenes. Baidya, we are told, has been instrumental in Bhattarai’s growing contacts with the Chinese. (Whether our hardest-line Maoist had any role in conferring the ‘Nepalese Deng Xiaoping’ title from a visiting Chinese dignitary remains unclear, though.)
Bhattarai, on the other hand, has grown disenchanted by how his gulf with Baidya has served to strengthen Dahal. Regardless of the genuineness of a Bhattarai tilt northward, the posture itself, Baidya knows, would be enough to rattle Dahal and sow a few seeds of distrust in Delhi. Baidya, unsure of the depths of Bhattarai’s southern grounding, was, however, happy to see him named prime ministerial candidate only to be checked by Dahal, who continues as leader of the parliamentary party.
Shrestha’s 11th hour posturing must have been viewed with some suspicious by both Baidya and Bhattarai, perhaps even as something sponsored by the wily Dahal. Badal’s movements may have been aimed at maintaining his own relevance in the affair, but it did have the added effect of diluting the opposition to Dahal. So the protagonists realized the folly of continued brinkmanship and sought a safe landing.
Given the goings-on in the other political parties left, right and center, the Maoists’ landing was the safest it could have been. So does it really matter whether the affair was a ruse all along or was for real?
Nnnn

THE REPUBLIC OF INSANITY

Kathmandu, 28 July: The year 2005 will go down as the last year of peace in Nepal. The last three and a half years have been even worse, a period of political instability the like of which is not to be found in the whole of other countries in South Asia: three governments in three years with a fourth one to be installed any time. We have had same duck premiers holding on to office for several months. The incumbent cabinet head Jhala Nath Khanal is living on daily wages since two months. Trikal Bastavik writes in Peoples Review.
All but Khanal and his loyalists claim that his is a lame duck cabinet, the latest example being that for the first time in the country’s history the scheduled date for presenting the budget estimates to the House was deferred to the next day. The budget got leaked. With several civil servants’ organisations inspired by different political parties, this was only to be expected in loktantra.
Members of the House raised objections but to no avail as the parliament has “its own procedure,” to quote its Speaker Subahas Nemwang, who has a long shot at the president’s job. Most Nepalis do not know what republic really means. They never heard of its in the Nepali context till the “seven-party leaders” abruptly announced that republic was their goal for the country which always had monarchy in its recorded history.
In the hope of gaining peace, progress and such other rhetoric, the Nepali people were so euphoric that they did not realize what they were losing. Before they could say “secular, federal republic,” the entire country was enveloped in instability wrapped in a culture of impunity without any sign of safety and security to life, limb and property.
In a complex inherent in most Nepalis, no one is willing to bell the cat or say a spade is a spade. The changes practiced since 2006 have failed to provide any relief to the average Nepali. The way the constitution making process has been treated in so cavalier manner is enough indication of the Maoists’ loud promises and highly disappointing practice. Now that they have been undressed, the people have no illusion that these leaders who ordered gun and bomb-totting cadres to action during the insurgency days when more than 15,000 people lost their lives.
As for the others, their statements are nothing but overused and empty. If there is anything new in what they say, it is a shameless lifting of what they manage from the rhetoric churned out by the Maoists who they love to downgrade for creating a situation whereby the Nepali parliament will no longer have any party with a clear majority.
The Republic of Nepal has declared the existence of 108 to 112 underground, armed groups, a development credited to the past half decade. Corruption, likewise, has taken to such level that two prominent bankers privately confided that “some senior leftist leaders” have been seeking their assistance in ways of investing money and getting the best of returns with security guaranteed. “You will be surprised over the amounts of money they seem to possess,” one of them said recently.
This author is not surprised that these politicians accumulated enormous amounts of money whose sources are officially not known. He is surprised, though, that they have not been convinced of the suggestions they would naturally have sought from other business leaders such as the MPs nominated by various parties on the quota of proportional representation.
According to a reliable source in New Delhi, India’s Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, perhaps the most trusted politician for India’s Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, is learnt to have been entrusted with the task of making “a thorough review” of the situation in Nepal. To visitors he trusts, Mukherjee confides his worry about China coming out “in an aggressive manner” in Nepal.
The Indian government does not find the Maoists reliable. A good section feels that the one-time insurgents have bitten off the hand that fed them for eight and a half years in the outskirts of the Indian capital while the latter’s cadres killed and got killed in the decade-long war that pushed back Nepal’s development drive by at least 20 years.
UML leader K.P. Oli, Nepali Congress leaders Sher Bahadur Deuba and Shekhar Koirala, and, to some extent, Rastriya Janashkti Party’s Surya Bahadur Thapa flaunt their “good relations” with the senior Indian minister who could become the premier in the event of Rahul Gandhi not deciding to take the top job if his party were to become the lead partner in the coalition cabinet to be formed also after the next general elections.
The Republic of Nepal has been reduced to such a state that foreign heads of government are extremely reluctant to visit this country. This is very strange in view of the fact that the Panchayat and the governments thereafter used to receive many heads of state and government. Hardly a year went by without one or two foreign dignitaries visiting the land of the Himalayas and birthplace of the apostle of peace, the Buddha.
New Delhi likes to emphasize the “special relationship” between India and Nepal. But its heads of state or government prefer to visit Bhutan than Nepal. One has only to try figuring out when did an Indian president or a prime minister last paid a visit to Nepal, the policy becomes clear. If our senior leaders limit their aspirations to meeting a Mukherjee at the most, the question of a Sonia Gandhi or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or President Pratibha Patil paying an official visit is out of the question.
If a Red Label is fine, why bother with a Black Label? And, forget a Blue Label. Queen Elizabeth, also Britain’s head of church, had paid a visit to Nepal weeks after King Mahendra in December 1960 dissolved an elected parliament and sacked the B.P. Koirala Government. A quarter century later, she paid a second state visit to the world’s only Hindu kingdom that was marking the silver jubilee of the partyless system during the rule of King Birendra.
If the current state of progress in religious proselytizing gets a further boost, the Pope might decide to visit Kathmandu for the first time, though King Birendra had paid the Vatican a visit in the 1980s.

nnnn