London, July 2
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been shortlisted for a major new international award that aims at becoming the British equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Manmohan Singh is among the five nominees announced on Friday for the Chatham House Prize which will go to “an individual who has made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year”.

“The first recipient will be a leading international figure to whom the award will be made at a gala dinner at Mansion House in London on October 17,” said Chatham, a premier international think-tank on strategic affairs.

The nominees were selected by three past presidents of Chatham House - Lord Hurd, Lord Robertson and Baroness Williams.

The 5,000 members of the London-based Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, have been invited to vote for their preferred candidate from the shortlist by July 18.

The other candidates for the prize are Jordanian stateswoman Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, European Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen and Ukranian President Victor Yushchenko.

The citation for Manmohan Singh says: “The Prime Minister of India is best known for his forward-looking approach that turned around India’s economy when he was Finance Minister. He is now applying the same principles to India’s foreign policy.

“As recently as 2002 India and Pakistan had seemed close to war. A peace process, initiated by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in April 2003, had got stalled in the run-up to the Indian election in 2004.

“However, following his appointment in May 2004 as Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh continued the rapprochement with Pakistan, holding talks on the issue of Kashmir with General Pervez Musharraf in New York in September and withdrawing some troops from Kashmir in November.

“More than this, Manmohan Singh has also overseen a rapprochement with China”. — IANS 

United Nations, July 2
In a harsh attack on UN member states like China who advocate consensus as the only basis for the expansion of the Security Council, India has asserted that the strength of developing nations is their numbers and to deny them vote would mean taking away their main weapon.

“To say that there should be no vote but a consensus is to disarm them (developing nations) of their main weapon. The rhetoric of anti-privilege masks the reality of a cynical defence of entrenched privilege,” Indian Ambassador Nirupam Sen yesterday told the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level segment considering a document on UN reforms to be presented to a September summit of world leaders for adoption.

Rejecting proposals which either call for expansion in only non-permanent category or seek to deny developing countries a place among permanent members, he said accepting them would mean status quo which will neither empower General Assembly, nor help enhance developing nations’ role in the decision-making process.

Mr Sen said “a country that displaced another through a vote” is now proposing consensus for others, an apparent reference to Communist China’s bid on October 25, 1971, to replace Republic of China as sole representative of China in the UN through a procedural vote. The Assembly had then rejected credentials of the Republic of China and accepted those of the People’s Republic of China.

The Uniting for Consensus (UFC) group, led by Pakistan and Italy and supported by China, has proposed that expansion should be only in the non-permanent category by addition of 10 members. — PTI

London, July 2
Art curators have uncovered a new Leonardo Da Vinci drawing hidden beneath the surface of one of the Renaissance artist’s most celebrated works, Britain’s National Gallery said.

Da Vinci painted two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks between 1483 and 1508. London’s picture has long been regarded as an inferior copy of the original now in the Louvre in Paris.

National Gallery curators found the uncompleted drawing while researching how Da Vinci copied his original, using infrared scanning to see through layers of paint on the London picture.

They discovered two levels of underdrawing: one for The Virgin of the Rocks, and another beneath for a different picture, showing the Virgin with outstretched arms. — Reuters

Washington, July 2
Pakistan will either have to acquire its own missile defence system or increase its missile capabilities if the United States provides a missile defence system to India, Ambassador Jehangir Karamat told Dawn on Friday.

On Wednesday, the US and India signed a 10-year defence pact that entails joint weapons production, cooperation on missile defence and the transfer of technology.

“Some elements of this agreement do concerns us,” said General Karamat, who headed the Pakistani armed forces during the May 1998 nuclear crisis when Pakistan decided to conduct a series of nuclear tests in response to similar tests by India.

The Ambassador recalled that India has been trying to acquire PAC-3 missile defence system from the US for sometime and the defence pact signed this week does have a provision for bilateral cooperation in the field of missile defence.

“This will be a new element in South Asia. Although India has been talking about missile defence for sometime, the pact could lead to a transfer of systems, such as PAC-3, which will disturb the strategic balance of power,” said General Karamat. “We will not be able to ignore this, and will have to take steps to protect our deterrence capability,” he said.

Patriot Advanced Capability-3 or PAC-3 is a missile defence system that relies on kinetic energy to eliminate short and medium-range missiles carrying nuclear, biological and chemical warheads.

The US had already offered to sell second-generation PAC-2 missile defence system to India but New Delhi did not appear much interested in the system and latest report indicate that Washington has now agreed in principle to sell the advanced PAC-3 system to New Delhi.

“If India gets PAC-3, we will either have to ask the US also to provide the same system to us or we will have to think of other ways to have our own missile defence,” said Ambassador Karamat.

Islamabad, July 2
Pakistan could resume sugar imports from India in its bid to control domestic prices that have touched a four-year high.

The Economic Coordination Committee headed by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is to discuss the issue at its upcoming meeting.

“It’s not on the meeting’s agenda, but importing from India will definitely come up,” The News Saturday quoted Ashfaq Hassan Khan, adviser to the Prime Minister on finance, as saying.

Pakistan banned the import of Indian sugar in 2001 after the industry complained that this was hurting cane growers and processors. During fiscal 2000-01, traders had bought more than 800,000 tonnes of sugar from India.

Pakistan this year imported more than 5,00,000 tonnes of refined and raw sugar to meet shortfall in domestic output that has seen prices surge to Rs 30 per kg. — IANS