A day after the Nepalese government decided to nationalise its royal property, which includes seven palaces including the Narayanhiti, King Gyanendra and Queen Komal deserted the Narayanhiti Royal Palace on Friday.

According to a source, King Gyanendra and Queen Komal shifted to Nagarjuna Palace, 5-km north-west from Narayanhiti, for three months until the Constituent Assembly elections are held.

The government on Thursday had decided to nationalise the King's property which includes palaces of Basantapur, Patan, Bhaktapur, Gorkha, Lamjung and Nuwakot along with Narayanhiti. However, according to home minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula, King Gyanendra was allowed to stay in Narayanhiti till November 22, the scheduled date for the CA polls.

The Nagarjuna Palace, situated at the top of lush green Nagarjuna hill, is considered as the summer retreat for the royal family and is registered in King Gyanendra's name.

The royal couple will stay at the Nagarjuna Palace until the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly which will decide the fate of the monarchy.

Exiled Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif could be arrested on return here by revoking the remaining part of the remission of his unfinished jail term after he was convicted of hijacking Musharraf’s plane prior to the military coup, attorney-general Justice (R) Malik Muhammad Qayyum said on Friday.

Talking to a private TV channel, Malik said by returning to Pakistan Nawaz would violate the agreement he signed to stay out in exile for 10 years.

This would absolve the other party in the agreement of any obligation and deprive of any concessions he secured by the agreement. It would mean the remission granted in his life sentence for hijacking would also terminate, Malik added.

He said he was called by President Musharraf to discuss legal implications of the Supreme Court verdict ruling that Nawaz and his family must not be prevented from entering into the country.

Malik said in order to facilitate Nawaz Sharif’s exile for 10 years General Musharraf, as chief executive, had recommended to the then president Rafique Tarrar to remit his remaining sentence. Since Nawaz had not complied with the agreement, he had forfeited the right to remission, he added.

Retired Chief Justice of Pakistan Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui said once the President remitted sentence it couldn’t be revived.

Another retired chief justice of the Sindh High Court Aslam Nasir Zahid endorsed Siddiqui’s contention but thought that the former prime minister could be arrested in other cases, which were pending with the National Accountability Bureau.

Reacting sharply to threats of arrest, Shahbaz Sharif said the date for the return would be announced in consultation with PML-N leadership which had been called to London. The central leaders would first meet in Islamabad on August 25.

Islamabad, August 24
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed his willingness to consider any official initiative for a "grand national reconciliation", if President Pervez Musharraf were to make it clear that he is not a candidate for any post.

"He should allow a level playing field and invite everybody to come back home to sit across the table and resolve all matters among themselves," said the PML-N leader soon after the Supreme Court in Islamabad ruled that he could return home from a forced exile.

The former premier told Geo News channel that he was ready to sit with Musharraf in a room along with other political leaders to achieve "national reconciliation". But, he said, Musharraf should first declare that he would not be a candidate for any post in the government.

"I think these political parties have the ability to take decisions by themselves, have the ability to carve out the future course of things; we don’t have to depend on any military dictator to show us the way," Sharif was quoted as saying by the Dawn daily in a report from London.

When asked if like Benazir Bhutto he would also like to share power with Musharraf under an interim arrangement, the exiled former premier said dictatorship and democracy were two opposite things. "How can democrats share power with dictators?"

Regarding apprehensions that he would be arrested on landing in Pakistan, Sharif said there were no charges against him, "but they could fabricate cases against me, Musharraf is an expert in fabricating cases against innocent people and pardoning proven criminals if they shook hands with him." — PTI

London, August 24
Mother Teresa, who may be canonised as a saint by the Vatican later this year, had a deep crisis of faith in God for most part of her life, a set of her letters has revealed.

The correspondence, between Mother Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of years, showed that she felt alone and in a state of spiritual pain from around 1949, roughly the time when she started taking care of the poor and dying in Kolkata.

The "Saint of the Gutter" died on September 5, 1997, nine days after her 87th birthday.

Although she publicly proclaimed that her heart belonged "entirely to the Heart of Jesus", she wrote to the Rev Michael Van Der Peet, a spiritual confidant, in September 1979, that "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak."

The letter was written just a few weeks before she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her charitable work. More than 40 other letters, many of which she had asked to be destroyed in her will, show her fighting off feelings of "darkness" and "torture" for the last nearly half-century of her life.

The letters have been published for the first time in a new book titled "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light", edited by the Rev Brian Kolodiejchuk, a close friend. He wrote that during that period, Mother Teresa did not feel God "in her heart or in the Eucharist".

Kolodiejchuk gathered the letters as part of the process to make Mother Teresa a saint, and is responsible for arguing in her favour. — PTI

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a contempt of court notice to federal minister for parliamentary affairs Sher Afgan Khan Niazi for making disparaging remarks against the judiciary.

A seven member larger bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry issued the unprecedented notice to Niazi after Attorney General Qayyum Malik told the court that Afgan’s remarks prima facie are derogatory and contemptuous to the Supreme Court. The court gave the minister 14 days to respond.

If found guilty of the contempt of Court, Afgan can be jailed for upto six months and might lose his job along with a disqualification from contesting an election to a public office.

Ironically, he has filed a reference against Tehrike Insaf chairman Imran Khan for his disqualification as an MP on charge of moral turpitude.

The Court took suo moto notice on Afgan’s comments made during a talk show criticizing the judgment on return of exiled premier Nawaz Sharif and judiciary’s current activism

The Court invited Attorney General of Pakistan to seek his opinion. The AG said he did not see the programme but its reports appearing in newspapers appeared to be prima facie derogatory. The AG will be required to appear before the Court as prosecutor against Afgan.

Afgan said he would not accept the Supreme Court’s verdict. “I do not accept the verdict as it is not a court judgment but an expression of popular sentiments under public pressure,” he said on the contempt notice.

“The judiciary has become a party. The judiciary should launch its own justice party.” he had said on a TV programme while talking about the SC’s verdict in the Nawaz Sharif case.

He refused to withdraw his remarks when the anchor of the programme told him that he might face contempt of court.