Amid widespread criticism against the major political parties for violating the election code of conduct, top-brass leaders of three major ruling parties -- Nepali Congress (NC), Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist and Leninist (CPN-UML) and CPN-Maoist -- on Tuesday reached a 10-point understanding reiterating commitment to hold the Constituent Assembly (CA) election in a free and fair manner.

Holding a meeting at Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s official residence in Baluwatar this morning, NC president Koirala, UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal and Maoist chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, inked the agreement in this regard.

During the meeting they also agreed to set up a three-member panel comprising the leaders of the parties to reconcile and address possible conflict among the parties in course of the election campaign.

Unveiling the agreement paper, the top three leaders said in order to ensure conducive environment and hold the election on the slated date none of the parties would intervene in each others election campaigns, intimidate or threaten voters.

However, the Maoist cadres in Rasuwa district, in northern remote Himalayan region, disrupted the NC’s election programme and thrashed its candidate Balchandra Poudel severely.

According to a report, cadres of the Young Communist League, a youth wing of

Maoists, intervened in the NC’s election programme and attacked its supporters

around 2:30 pm critically injuring Poudel. The government has been preparing to airlift Poudel to Kathamndu for treatment.

Similarly, NC candidates in Gorkha district, in western hilly region, put off their election campaigns today as the Maoist cadres tried to obstruct the former’s programme.

On Monday, the Election Commission had invited the top leaders of the three main ruling parties to reassure the national and international community by making a public commitment to adhere to the election code and create a peaceful atmosphere for the historical polls on April 10 that was deferred twice earlier.

Sri Lanka is under heavy fire from the international community over its worsening human rights record and it is amid mounting criticism that the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), which was appointed to oversee the inquiries into 16 cases of serious rights violations, including the August 2006 massacre of 17 local employees of French charity Action Against Hunger, quit their role in the country.

The IIGEP, which was headed by Justice P.N. Bhagawati of India, said in a statement it was halting its operations to determine whether the inquiries were being conducted in accordance with the internationally accepted norms and standards, saying it no longer saw how they could contribute further to the protection and enhancement of human rights in Sri Lanka as suggestions and observations made by them had been ignored or rejected.

The IIGEP discussion to quit comes at a crucial time when the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) looking into the 16 rights violations are in the public hearings phase of their inquiry with the killings of the aid workers being inquired into at the moment.

On Monday, the CoI heard that security personnel were involved in the killing of the aid workers who were found shot dead in the eastern town of Muttur in August 2006.

Bangladesh’s anti-corruption watchdog on Tuesday pressed charges against former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s son for illegally earning money and concealing it from the government.

These were the tenth charges pressed against Tarique Rahman, Zia’s eldest son, who was arrested in March 2007, two months after the military-backed caretaker government took over.

Rahman was popularly known as Bangladesh’s “Mr Ten Percent” for his notorious corruption ring that held a stake in most government and private contracts.

The Anti-Corruption Commission also asked the police to arrest Rahman’s wife, Zobaida Rahman, and his mother-in-law Iqbalmand Banu, as accomplices in his crime.

The commission said Rahman had concealed Tk 2.17 crore ($ 3,10,000) and had amassed about Tk 2.75 crore more from ‘unknown sources’.

His wife and mother-in-law were accused of assisting him for committing the offences.

He was earlier charged with earning Tk 4.8 crore illegally from his stint as the owner of a Bengali-language newspaper and another company. 

Princeton (New Jersey), April 1 
Robert F Goheen, who led Princeton University during the 1960s, a time of rapid turbulent change for the college and the world, died today. He was 88.

Goheen died of heart failure at the University Medical Center at Princeton, the school said. He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as US ambassador to India, serving from May, 1977, through December, 1980.

He was a 37-year-old assistant classics professor when he became Princeton's 16th president in 1957.During his tenure, which lasted until his retirement in 1972, the university first admitted women, increased its ethnic and racial diversity, and expanded its commitment to research while its annual budget quadrupled.

Goheen earned his bachelor of arts degree in classics from Princeton in 1940.He later served as a part-time teacher while earning his master's degree in 1947 and his doctorate a year later, both in classics.

He was named an assistant professor at Princeton in 1950, then became director of the National Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Programme in 1953. — AP

Toronto, April 1
Two Sikhs have filed a human rights complaint against a sawmill firm in Canada saying its new hard hat policy is preventing them from returning to their jobs.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal accepted the complaint of Kalwant Singh Sahota and Mander Singh Sohal last month and asked International Forest Products (Interfor) to file its response by April 9.

“Both of these guys are both long, long-term forestry employee workers and this is the first time this has ever happened,” their lawyer David Perry was quoted as saying by Vancouver Sun.

Sahota, who is on a disability leave, said he learned last November that he would no longer be able to work at the mill wearing his turban because of a stricter hard hat rule.

Sahota, who began work at the mill in 2004, and Sohal, who has worked there since 1988, are receiving the support of Sikh groups across Metro Vancouver, Sahota said.

“Eventually all will benefit if we win this case. All the practising Sikhs would benefit for this,” he said.

“This is pretty ignorant and pretty insensitive of the employer to bring such a policy. We are living in the 21st century. We are living in the hub of multiculturalism.”

“We sacrificed our entire lives for the industry and all of a sudden because of this, I feel ridiculed. I feel insulted when they brought this policy in,” Sahota said.

Sikhs in British Columbia have been allowed to ride motorcycles and bikes without helmets. — PTI

Washington, April 1
Nearly 65 Indian workers, who claim they were lured to move to the US by false promises of permanent jobs, have protested before the White House against the “abuses” in the H2B visa system, which was used to traffic them here.

The workers, who complain that they underwent “slave-like treatment” at a Mississippi shipyard, demonstrated outside the White House for more than an hour calling for dignity of the employees.

Towards the end of their protest, the workers, in a symbolic rejection of the H2B visa system or the guest worker programme, ripped up the enlarged xeroxed page of their passport, in which their visas had been stamped.

The workers, from among a group of over 100 who walked off their jobs at a Signal International Plant in Pascagula, Mississippi, were joined by their supporters from several organisations based in Washington DC.

The workers are demanding Congressional investigation of their former employer Signal International, a Northrop Grumman subcontractor that allegedly held them as forced labour, and is already the subject of a criminal human trafficking investigation by the Department of Justice.

As many as 500 Indian welders and pipe fitters had forked out about $ 20,000 apiece to the US and Indian recruiters for false promises of permanent residency in the USA, organisers of the protest said.

“Instead, they were held in forced labour by Northrop Grumman subcontractor Signal International on 10-month temporary H2B guest worker visas in Gulf Coast shipyards under deplorable conditions,” the organisers said. — PTI