PRACHANDA MEETS XI Kathmandu, 18 April: Maoist Chairman Prachanda held 40-minute discussions with new Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing Thursday. Nepali Ambassador Mahesh Maskey was present at the talks. Prachanda is the first South Asian leader to hold talks with the new top Chinese leadership in China. The Nepali Maoist leader began dialogue with Chinese leaders isn Beijing Wednesday. MORE. NEW PROCEDURE FOR CITIZENSHIP DISTRIBUTION Kathmandu, 18 April: Ministry of Home Affairs has paved the way for the distribution of the citizenship certificates to the government teams formed for the distribution of the citizenship certificates, RSS reports.. A meeting of the Council of Ministers held today made the decision after endorsing the new working procedure for the distribution of the citizenship certificates today, said Madhav Prasad Paudel, Spokesperson of the Government. The government has formed a total of 561 citizenship certificates distribution teams to provide citizenship certificates in all the 75 districts, stated the Ministry. The teams would start distributing the citizenship certificate from April 21 as a campaign. The meeting also decided to give consent to spend Rs. 32.5 million among the amount of property under the possession of the Nepal Trust for its conservation, said Spokesperson Paudel. The government has decided to keep the amount of money that the government received from the Nepal Rastriya Bank as for dividends from its one per cent share to the general share, he added. Spokesperson Poudel said that the meeting gave permission to Secretary or Joint-Secretary at the Ministry of Finance to form a talks team for US dollar 80 million going to be provided by the World Bank for second project of the Poverty Alleviation Fund. Similarly, the meeting gave consent to Secretary or Joint Secretary to sign on a loan agreement of Rs. 13 billion to be provided by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the Tanahun Hydropower Project. It also decided to send Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Durga Prasad Bhattarai, to participate in a ministry-level meeting at Ulan Bator of Mongolia. The meeting is to be held from April 27-29. The government would send Bhattarai in meeting after Minister for Foreign Affairs, Madhav Prasad Ghimire, cancelled his visit due to current political situation in the country. Similarly, the government also extended time for collecting details of conflict affected people until July 15 and promoted an official of 10th level under the Health Ministry to 11th level, said Minister Poudel. Likewise, Coordinator of the Committee under the Army Integration Special Committee, Balananda Sharma, has been given responsibility of mediator to make coordination of problems seen in course of army integration between the government and political parties. The time of the Committee had terminated in April 13. Nnnn