Sri Lankan president in Nepal on pilgrimage

Amid stringent security, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa arrived in Nepal Thursday on a three-day pilgrimage after his plans were interrupted earlier this year due to an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan.

The former lawyer, whose government inflicted a crushing defeat on Tamil guerrillas in May killing their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, is leading a high-level delegation on the visit, the main focus of which is to visit Lumbini in southern Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha.

Arriving on a special flight, the 63-year-old was welcomed at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu by the Deputy Prime Minister Sujata Koirala, who is also the foreign minister, and Culture Minister Minendra Rijal.

The Sri Lankan president will separately meet Nepal's President Ram Baran Yadav, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other senior ministers and parliamentarians.

On Friday, he will fly to Lumbini to inaugurate a vihar - a Buddhist monastery built by the Sri Lankan government. Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist.

The island nation is also the current chair of the regional grouping, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and efforts are on between the member countries, especially Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, to promote religious tourism.

Rajapaksa had visited Kathmandu in May to inaugurate direct flights by the Sri Lankan national carrier, Sri Lankan Airlines, between Colombo and Kathmandu.

However, he cut his visit short and returned home without visiting Lumbini after gunmen opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.

Rajapaksa is the first head of state to visit Nepal after it became a republic with the end of a decade-long communist insurgency.

Time to get back to work in Nepal

Now that the two biggest festivals - Dashain and Tihar - of Nepal are over, it’s time to wake up from the festive slumber and get back to work. Because all’s not well with the peace process: the constitution isn’t ready, the Maoist “army” remains in temporary cantonments and new armed groups continue to rampage through the country’s restive southern plains. In short, it’s time now to work hard and meet the deadlines.

Away in New York, the UN officials are closely monitoring the situation in Nepal. Like the UN, several friendly donor countries are also closely watching Nepal. But all of them continue to express their concerns about the rather slow - and often “disturbing”- traits of the three-year-old peace process.

Back in July, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recommended the Security Council to further extend the term of United Nations Mission In Nepal (UNMIN) - that is monitoring the peace process in Nepal - by six months. But he made it clear that the progress in Nepal’s peace process was stalled due to misunderstanding between the political stakeholders. Frustrating it may sound, but the political stakeholders haven’t made any progress whatsoever; the face-off continues.

Most recently, the UN secretary general’s special representative for children and armed conflict, Radhikha Coomaraswamy, appealed for swift and orderly release of the 2,973 Maoist army personnel identified as minors. “These children have a right to start their lives anew and help build and peaceful and prosperous Nepal,” she said. Peace Minister Rakam Chemjong says work is on to release the rehabilitate the minors.

If that happens, that will set the stage for rehabilitation and integration of the 19,000-plus Maoist ex-combatants, who waged a decade-long war in the country against the previous governments.

Equally important, the UNDP is concerned about the fact that Nepal may fail to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs seek to fight hunger and poverty, besides seeking to significantly reduce illiteracy, lack of access to health care, besides meeting other development targets by 2015. On a recent afternoon, youth leaders congregated at the Open Air Theatre in the capital and appealed to one and all to join hands to fight urban poverty, achieve MDGs.

The tasks look Herculean. And there shouldn’t be any room for complacency. That means Nepalis and their foreign helping hands need to get down to business, work toward achieving MDGs, all the while taking the country’ peace process to its logical finish.

In the higher echelons of power, all the 601 members of the Constituent Assembly (CA) need to catch up with their mission.

They’ve got to make sure that all the committees tasked with preparing concept papers for the new constitution meet their deadlines and submit their reports. For, it is only seven months to go. By May 2010, the leaders of the popularly elected CA have promised, the country’s new constitution will be readied.

But even before that process gets off to a flying start, the top leaders of the major parties need to put their heads together, discuss what’s right and what’s wrong, find an amicable solution to the president’s move reinstating the then army chief. That way, they can start it afresh. Seems unlikely, but the parties have no choice but to get the process going. The politicos need to go beyond tea party diplomacies and photo calls.

Fresh from Beijing (and surrounding provinces of China), Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) chairman Prachanda has indicated that he is in a mood to do business, that he’s willing to hold fresh talks with his political rivals and work toward consensus.

His emphasis on positivism on his return from Beijing - where he held crucial talks with President Hu Jintao, who is also the general secretary of Chinese Communist Party - could finally help. If that spirit is kept intact, the three-party talks could bear fruits.

Gulf Times

Diplomats from Security Council members tour barracks in Nepal

A team of Nepal-based diplomats from six Security Council members on Friday visited army barracks and cantonment sites in the Asian country as part of their first collective tour since the establishment of a United Nations political mission there in 2007.

Accompanied by Karin Landgren, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, the team saw first-hand how UNMIN is electronically monitoring weapons, which are under live surveillance, stored by the Nepal Army at Chhauni barracks and by the Maoist army in Chulachuli.

“That there is a light UN monitoring presence speaks to the confidence that the AMAAA [Agreement on Monitoring the Management of Arms and Armies] will be respected by the parties,” Ms. Landgren, who also heads UNMIN, said.

She underscored that there have been few serious violations of the agreement, which was struck between the parties and the UN, and the mission has made recommendations to both the Nepal Army and the Maoist army on how to enhance monitoring and cooperation.

The Council mission – comprising Nepal-based diplomatic representatives of China, France, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – was also briefed today by some UNMIN arms monitors, who come from 18 countries.

“The presence of weapons containers and arms monitors reflects the unfinished business of the peace process, and UNMIN calls on the parties to make strengthened and sincere efforts to create the conditions for UNMIN to complete its work and for Nepal’s peace process to usher in a stable, just and prosperous future for its people,” Ms. Landgren noted.

A decade-long civil war, claiming some 13,000 lives, ended in 2006 with the signing of a peace accord between the Government and Maoists. After conducting Constituent Assembly elections in May 2008, the nation abolished its 240-year-old monarchy and declared itself a republic.

UNMIN was established in 2007 as a special political mission tasked with helping advance the peace process. It has been extended through January 2010 to assist in the management of arms and army personnel contained in the cantonments.

Nepal government running out of money

Nepal's government will run out of money in less than a month unless it can lift opposition protests in parliament by supporters of the country's former Maoist insurgents and pass a new budget, officials warned Thursday.

Parliament must approve this fiscal year's budget by the middle of November or face a likely shutdown of the administration, with the government unable to pay employees, Cabinet spokesman Sarada Prasad Trital said.

The Maoist lawmakers have held up proceedings in the chamber for several months with protests against the president for rejecting the dismissal of the army chief by the previous Maoist-led government.

The decision by the president, who officially commands the military, led Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal to resign as prime minister. A new coalition government took over in May.

President Ram Baran Yadav had overruled Dahal's attempts to fire the army chief, saying they were unconstitutional.

The Maoists accused the army chief of opposing the integration of thousands of former Maoist fighters into the national army _ a key component of a peace deal between the government and the rebels when they laid down their arms three years ago. The fighters are still in U.N.-monitored camps.

The Maoists contested elections last year and emerged as Nepal's largest political party.