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Nepal elects its prez today
Terrorism, Kashmir to dominate Indo-Pak talks
Foreign forces won’t be allowed in Pak: Gilani
Obama warnings undercut Pak govt: Official
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Obama meets Karzai
NATO accidentally kills 4 Afghan civilians
Half of ‘missing’ Indians traced
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Nepal elects its prez today
Nepali Congress leader Dr Ram Baran Yadav has been seemed stronger than his rival Ram Raja Prasad Singh in presidential run-off slated for Monday as some of the small parties in the Constituent Assembly decided to back
Yadav.
Chitra Bahadur K.C. of the National People’s Front (NPF) on Sunday announced that all four Constituent Assembly members from his party would vote for Yadav in presidential run-off citing his democratic and nationalist characters. On Saturday the NPF had boycotted the presidential election. Similarly, Keshav Prasad Mainali of the Chure-Bhavar Rastriya Ekta Party and Ganesh Sah of the
CPN-Unified have also expressed commitment to favour Yadav. There are altogether six members from these two parties in the Constituent Assembly. It may be recalled that all nine-members from the
CPN-ML, eight-members from the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, three from the Rastriya Janashakti Party and five members of the
CPN-Unified have already decided to vote for Yadav. The run-off election will hold on Monday morning as
none of the presidential candidates became able to bag a majority vote in the election held on
Saturday. Yadav, a presidential candidate supported by the new alliance of the Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML and the Madhesi People’s Rights Forum had secured 283 votes, whereas Ram Raja Prasad Singh fielded by the
CPN-Maoist with the support of the Tarai-Madhes Democratic Party had obtained 270 votes. In order to secure the post of country’s head of the state one of them have to secure at least 298 votes out of 594 votes. If all members from the Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML and the Forum, including the aforesaid parties, cast their votes in favour of Yadav he will get 301 votes that means three votes more than
he required. Meanwhile, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda dubbed the new alliance among the Congress, the UML and the Forum as irrelevant and apolitical alliance that can put the ongoing peace process in to serious crisis. “The new alliance among the NC, the UML and the MPRF is seriously vengeful and apolitical and that has led to the entire peace process and the Constitution drafting process in a questionable place,” Dahal said, adding, “And it has also raised serious
questions over the historical peace deal which began with the 12-point agreement.” Similarly, another influential Maoist leader Mohan Baidhya alias Kiran announced that his party would not take initiative to form a new government if their presidential candidate Ram Raja Prasad Singh loses presidential run-off on Monday. However, he said his party would collaborate with all parties just to take the peace process into a logical end and draft a new Constitution of the country.
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Terrorism, Kashmir to dominate Indo-Pak talks
New Delhi, July 20 Foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir will kick-start the two-day talks on eight outstanding issues between the two countries by concentrating on peace and security, including confidence building measures
(CBMs), and Jammu and Kashmir. The other six issues being discussed by the two countries at different levels are: Wullar barrage, friendly exchanges, Siachen glacier, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, and economic and commercial cooperation. The talks between the two top diplomats coincide with the trust vote sought in the Lok Sabha by the UPA government, which is fighting for its survival following the withdrawal of support by the Left parties over the Indo-US nuclear deal issue. Relations between India and Pakistan have warmed since the two countries initiated the peace process after a historic meeting between the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on the margins of the SAARC summit in Islamabad in January 2004. Pakistan has often complained that the peace process has been progressing slowly, but India has contended that the issues between the two countries are so complicated that they can’t be resolved within a definite timeframe. New Delhi has also held the view that Pakistan should follow the example of China in bilateral relations with India by putting the difficult issues on the backburner and finding solutions to those which can be resolved easily. However, Pakistan insists that Kashmir is the ‘core issue’ between the two countries and no progress could be achieved on other matters until this issue was not resolved. Official sources said the two-day talks will focus on “building on convergence and narrowing down
divergences” over the Kashmir issue. India will unequivocally convey to Pakistan its strong anguish over the activities of ISI in the region, particularly against Indian interests. In this connection, Islamabad’s attention would be drawn towards the involvement of ISI in the July 7 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, in which around 50 people, including an Indian military attache and a diplomat, were killed. The attack had come within a fortnight of Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s visit to New Delhi during which he emphasised the need for India and Pakistan to jointly fight the menace of terrorism.
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Foreign forces won’t be allowed in Pak: Gilani
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has underlined the urgency of tackling extremism and militancy. Addressing the nation for the first time, Gilani said the war on terror was Pakistan’s war and foreign forces cannot operate on its territory. He said the militancy was making it difficult to run the affairs of the government, but expressed confidence that the government would overcome this problem.
He said the PPP-led coalition government would fulfil all its promises, including the restoration of sacked judges, controlling price hike and load shedding. He urged for patience to let his government overcome these challenges that were complicated by the misrule of past years. The Prime Minister declared that his government would not allow any foreign country to operate from Pakistan against terrorists and said that Pakistani forces would do the job for which the international community had been taken into confidence. He said the country was going through a critical phase which demanded that, “We should not waste our time in levelling allegations against each other.” He appealed to the nation to give time to the elected government to deliver specially in improving the deteriorating economic situation. Reacting to the speech, PML-Q secretary general Mushahid Hussain Sayed described it as disappointing. He said the Prime Minister wasted much time on shifting blame to the previous government but said little on the performance of his government in first hundred days.
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Obama warnings undercut Pak govt: Official
Peshawar, July 20 North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Governor Owais Ghani said any incursion into Pakistan’s mountainous north-western tribal belt bordering Afghanistan would spark “disastrous” consequences for the whole world. Obama was in Kabul today, days after vowing to shift the US focus on Iraq to Al-Qaida militants based in Pakistan who are launching a growing number of attacks on the US and the NATO forces in Afghanistan. “Candidate Obama gave these statements. I come out openly and say such statements undermine support, don't do it,” Ghani said in an interview yesterday at his official residence in Peshawar. A spate of US missile strikes in Pakistan on Al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts in the tribal areas had also inflamed public sentiment against Islamabad’s role in the US-led “war on terror,” said Ghani.
— AFP
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Obama meets Karzai
Kabul, July 20 Obama has previously criticised Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the hardline Islamist Taliban in 2001, but said the purpose of this trip was to listen rather than deliver strong messages. Obama, part of a Congressional delegation, was at the heavily guarded Afghan presidential palace in the capital Kabul and was having lunch with Karzai, a palace official said. The Illinois senator will also visit Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain on a foreign tour he hopes will help answer Republican criticism that he does not have the experience to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Obama last week criticised Karzai in an interview with CNN. “I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped to organise Afghanistan, and the government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence. So there are a lot of problems there,” he said. Once the darling of the West, Karzai has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for failing to take tough action to clamp down on rampant corruption, tackle former warlords and stamp out record-breaking drug production - all factors that feed the growing Taliban insurgency. But asked ahead of the trip whether he would have tough talk for Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Obama replied: “I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking. And I think it is very important to recognise that I'm going over there as a US senator. We have one president at a time, so it’s the President’s job to deliver those messages,” Obama said. — Reuters
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NATO accidentally kills 4 Afghan civilians Kabul, July 20 The reported civilian and the police deaths could damage popular support for the Afghan government as well as for foreign forces operating here. President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with the US and other nations fighting resurgent militants to avoid civilian casualties. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating whether three other civilians also were killed last night in the Barmal district of Paktika province when its troops fired two mortar rounds that landed nearly 1 km short of their target. “ISAF deeply regrets this accident and an investigation as to the exact circumstances of this tragic event is now underway,” it said in a statement. On the other side of the war-torn country in Farah province, a convoy of foreign forces showed up in Anar Dara district near the Iranian border and clashed with the Afghan police, killing nine of them, said provincial Deputy Governor Younus Rasuli. — AP
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Half of ‘missing’ Indians traced
Melbourne, July 20 The Indians, who claimed to be victims of an immigration scam and paid US$17,000 each for what they thought, would be permanent residency when they arrived in New Zealand and disappeared last week, sending immigration officials into a tizzy. About 220 Indians arrived in Auckland last week bound for Sydney’s World Youth Day celebrations to see the Pope, but the 39-strong group failed to turn up for their connecting flight on July 15. Some reports today put the number of those missing as 40. About 20 members of the group have been located, officials said. Sikh Society spokesman Daljit Singh said a couple of members of the group were leaving today as they now understood that they did not have the residency and were departing before their visas expired on August 5.
— PTI
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UK court to decide on open-air cremations for Hindus Nepal’s former king now leads a lonely life 
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