As a first jolt to the Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist)-led government, a senior Maoist leader who was appointed to the post of minister for land reforms and management has resigned in defiance to the party directives on Friday.

Minister Matrika Prasad Yadav preferred to quit the government rather than to apologise publicly as per the party decision for his recent controversial involvement in seizing private land in Siraha district with the help of armed Maoist combatants.

Just a day after the Prime Minister and Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal returned home wrapping up his five-day official visit to India, Dahal called the secretariat meeting of the party at his official residence in Baluwatar this afternoon to discuss about Yadav’s recent activities.

The secretariat meeting reached the decision that Yadav’s obstreperous participation in seizing the private properties at Mirchaiya VDC in Siraha district a few days ago was against the party policy. “So he must apologise publicly before the party,” a Maoist leader said quoting party decision.

But Yadav defended himself and claimed that he did nothing wrong by supporting the local landless squatters to reconstruct makeshifts in the land occupied by land mafia.

While Dahal was in New Delhi to visit India, Yadav had reached Siraha district and recaptured the private plots of land and properties and reconstructed huts by defying the acting Prime Minister and home minister Bamdev Gautam’s (who represents from the CPN-UML) order to demolish the huts built up by local Maoist supporter in the name of landless squatters.

At a press meet on Thursday, Yadav had said that he was ready to quit not only the government but also the party for the sake of people if the party leadership discouraged him to stand in favour of poor people. Following the incident the relations among the coalition partners - CPN-Maoist, CPN-UML and Madhesi People’s Rights Forum - had become cold and sour.

Meanwhile, the Maoist secretariat meeting also discussed the PM’s recent India visit and his upcoming visit tour to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Melbourne, September 19
Fearing that Russia may use the uranium from Australia for its nuclear weapons programme, the Federal Parliament’s Treaties Committee today advised the government to delay ratifying the treaty with the nation.

Australia is expected to review a report by the committee, which advised against uranium sale to Russia before its makes a final decision on the matter.

The treaty, worth about $1 billion for sale of uranium to Russia, was signed by the Howard government last year.

“Obviously, the global situation in relation to the Russian Federation is now complex as a result of what we have seen in Georgia and most particularly in Southern Ossetia,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said.

“We will be working closely with international governments on the best response to the Russians. This is again a very difficult challenge for the global order,” he added.

After examining the proposal, most of the members on the Treaties Committee said it should be torn up if eight stringent conditions could not be met, including the separation of Russia’s civil and military nuclear facilities, and the resumption of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of facilities that would take Australian uranium.

Committee members had earlier expressed fears that Russia could use Australian uranium as part of its nuclear weapons programme, though Coalition Senators have issued a dissenting report saying that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty provides safeguards against Russia’s use of uranium for military use.

They also said nuclear power might help Russia lower its greenhouse gas emissions. — PTI

A US think-tank says Pakistan is close to completing construction of its second plutonium production reactor and is building a third. The Institute for Science and International Security says this may sharpen a nuclear arms race with India.

The report is based on commercial satellite imagery taken on September 3, May 18 and February 9 of this year. The images of the Khushab plutonium production reactor site show a clearly visible row of cooling towers, typically built in the later phase of reactor construction.

The second reactor could start in a year, the report says, adding, “ Once completed, these reactors will increase several-fold Pakistan’s ability to make weapon-grade plutonium for nuclear weapons.

The report warns the wider implication of Pakistan increasing its plutonium production capacity must not be overlooked. “There is a real risk that it will exacerbate an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race and increase tensions more broadly between the two.”

The September 3 imagery shows that the roof of the third Khushab reactor hall is not yet placed on top and the reactor vessel can be seen inside. There does not appear to be construction of any additional reactors in the imagery. 

The report says Pakistan’s increase in plutonium production “furthers needlessly the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan and undermines fragile efforts at rapprochement between the two countries in other spheres.”

India can “easily match Pakistan’s actions, given its own capabilities to produce plutonium for weapons in heavy water power reactors and a breeder reactor under construction,” the report says. 

It goes on to suggest that rather than witnessing a “ wasteful and dangerous surge in the production of fissile materials for weapons in South Asia, the US should make a key priority convincing Pakistan to join the negotiations of a universal, verified, Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), which would ban the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives in a verifiable manner.

Ruling out any alliance with the pro-Musharraf PML-Q in order to save his brother Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has warned that any attempt to destabilise the provincial government would set the entire country in a political turmoil.

“The PPP should end the current controversy on the future of Punjab government to let things settle down in the province,” Sharif observed while talking to reporters in Lahore on return from London on Friday after a weeklong stay there. He shelved his plans to stop over in Saudi Arabia for some days on way back home, apparently because of the evolving political situation in the province.

Shahbaz would have to lean on support from a break-away group of the PML-Q calling itself as ‘forward bloc’ with about 33-35 members to save his government. In a vote of confidence, however, the defection clause of the constitution would apply making these MPs liable to be unseated from the assembly membership on charge of defection.

The PML-N is nine short of simple majority in the 371-member assembly to win the confidence vote without PPP support. The PML-Q with 83 members holds the balance and is currently negotiating with the PPP to form a coalition in punjab. If the forward bloc raises its strength to 44, it can save its members from the defection clause.

President Zardari on Friday called Sharif on telephone soon after his return and invited him to attend the first address of “your younger brother” to the joint session of the Parliament on Saturday. 

Quetta, (Pakistan), September 19
An explosion killed five students at an Islamic school near the Pakistani city of Quetta today, the police said.

Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, a southwestern province bordering Afghanistan, where a large number of schools, or madrasas were set up in the 1980s to raise volunteers to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in a war covertly funded by the USA and Saudi Arabia.

The Taliban movement sprang from these madrasas in the 1990s. ‘’The madrasa people say that someone threw explosives into the madrasa, but we are investigating,’’ police official Wazir Khan Nasir said.

However, another police official said the blast took place inside a room of the madrasa and its walls had fallen outwardly, suggesting there could be some explosives inside the room. ‘’We are looking into all possibilities including the one that whether they were preparing some explosives.’’ — Reuters

Beijing, September 19 
The World Health Organisation today called for China to find out why it took months for a scandal, involving deadly tainted milk powder to become public. 

While praising China’s response since news of the contaminated products broke last week, the WHO China representative, Hans Troedsson said the authorities must determine why reporting systems appeared to had initially failed. “The government must find out if this was deliberate or due to ignorance,” Troedsson said.

However, Troedsson praised China’s response once the news broke, which has seen authorities tighten supervision of dairy products nationwide. “Overall, I am very pleased. I think they have responded in a very good way,” he added.

China said that milk powder tainted with the chemical melamine, which used to make plastics, had sickened at least 6,200 babies nationwide and killed four over a period of many months. The initial reports of the problem only came to light last week in the Chinese-government controlled media.

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday her government “blew the whistle” to the authorities in Beijing after the local-level Chinese officials refused to act.— AFP

Dubai, September 19
Mystery still shrouds the circumstances leading to the death of an Indian couple and their 20-month-old daughter, even two days after their bodies were fished out from the Dubai Creek.

Girish Kumar, 29, his wife Shabija and their daughter were pulled from the water on Wednesday, the police said yesterday. the police is treating Kumar’s death as suicide and meanwhile investigating the other two.

There were speculations that Kumar had tried to kill himself earlier in a gas explosion and then drowned together. Neighbours said that they saw him rushing out of their flat with his wife and daughter at 5 am on Tuesday.

The family was said to be under heavy financial burden that had reached a critical point because Kumar earned less than Rs 25,000 a month as a foreman. They shared a room with a Philippine family. — PTI

London, September 19 
Days after the senior most Asian origin police officer was “temporarily relieved” over racism row, another senior Muslim officer Ali Dizaei has been suspended from duty on disciplinary grounds. Iran-born Ali Dizaei, the controversial Scotland Yard commander and the head of the National Black Police Association, has been suspended from duty, the metropolitan police authority said.

The professional standards sub-committee of the Metropolitan Police considered allegations concerning Commander Dizaei and decided to take action against the Muslim police officer.

Dizaei is considered a key supporter of assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, the country’s most senior ethnic-minority officer who was relieved of his duties this month. The independent police complaints commission said it had approved the decision to suspend Dizaei. Three disciplinary issues against him had been under consideration by the MPA’s Professional Standards Committee. He is alleged to have advised a defence team on how to undermine a case brought by the metropolitan police against a woman accused of leaving the scene of a fatal hit-and-run incident.
Another inquiry was begun into allegations that he had misused his force credit card, and a third centres on allegations that he fabricated evidence after arresting a man during an incident outside a restaurant in London.

He joined the police in 1986 and transferred to the Met in 1999 as a superintendent. — PTI 

BRIEFLY

Be fair to fairer sex, UN secy-gen to govts
NEW YORK: Ahead of a meeting of world leaders on Millennium Development Goals in New York next week, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has said that there should be accountability in allocating resources fairly for women “who are marginalised and whose needs are ignored”. Without accountability, governments will not allocate resources fairly. Women are the most severely impacted, because they often lack access to education, political office and courts. — PTI

Pirates hijack yet another ship
NAIROBI: Pirates seized another ship off the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean, a maritime official said on Thursday. Andrew Mwangura of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Programme said the “Great Creation” was hijacked on Wednesday, but added further details on its origin, crew and destination were not immediately available. Mwangura said the ship was being taken to Eyl, a pirate lair in Somalia’s northern breakaway state of Puntland. — AFP

Visually impaired enthrall
LONDON: To see is to believe but to see people who cannot see dance their way into the hearts of Britons is simply unbelievable. A group of visually impaired dancers from Bangalore, invited to the region by Kalapremi, an organisation devoted to art and celebrating its 25th anniversary this year are busy enthralling audiences in north-east England. The event, showcased for the students, aimed at not only introducing the children to the Indian dance form, but also instilling in the young minds. — PTI