Mamata relents on Teesta deal, LBA
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has told Bangladesh that breakthroughs will be achieved in the Teesta water-sharing deal and the Land Boundary Agreement, which have been hanging fire since she blocked them four years ago.
Meeting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina exclusively for half an hour at the end of her three-day visit here on Saturday, Ms. Banerjee said the Land Boundary Agreement was likely to go through in the Rajya Sabha session beginning February-end.
Ms. Banerjee, who was served hilsa for lunch at the Prime Minister’s official residence, Ganabhaban, said the famed fish was now unavailable in West Bengal. “You give us water, we will give you hilsa,” Ms. Hasina quipped.
The Prime Minister reminded her of the problems being faced by the people living in the enclaves, referring to the delay in the ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement. Ms. Banerjee said she had seen their problems.
In 2011, she stalled the two deals on the ground that West Bengal’s interests would be affected. The Bangladeshi leadership hopes Ms. Banerjee’s visit will pave the way for a solution.
On Friday, addressing a gathering in Dhaka, she asked the Bangladeshis to repose faith in her to deliver a settlement to the Teesta issue. She said she wanted to act as “a bridge” between the two countries. The Chief Minister visited Dhaka with 39 people, mostly from West Bengal’s cultural fraternity and including two Ministers and big businessmen.
Before visiting Ms. Hasina’s residence, Ms. Banerjee paid tributes to the Bengali language martyrs by placing a wreath at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka.
‘Arunachal visit breach of consensus’
‘It undermines China’s territorial sovereignty, right and interests’
For the second successive day, China has protested Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, calling the journey a breach of consensus that had been reached between the two countries on the boundary issue.
On Saturday, China’s Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin called in Ashok Kantha, India’s Ambassador to China, “to lodge stern representation” on Prime Minister Modi’s visit to “a disputed border region,”Xinhua reported. Mr. Liu expressed “strong dissatisfaction and staunch opposition” to the Indian side’s insistence on arranging the visit by its leader to the disputed area on the China-India border.
The report said the Chinese embassy in India “lodged representation” with the Indian authorities on the visit.
During the meeting, Mr. Liu pointed out that “the act by Indian side undermined China’s territorial sovereignty, right and interests.” He reiterated that the Chinese government “has never recognised the so-called ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ unilaterally set up by the Indian side.”
Mr. Liu observed that India’s action “artificially amplified differences between the two countries on the border issue and thus went against the principles and consensus that the two sides reached on properly addressing the issue.”
On previous occasions, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has maintained that Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Ping had reached an “important consensus” on the border issue.
Mr. Liu hoped that the Indian side would treasure the sound momentum in the growth of bilateral relations, march toward the same goal with China and abide by the “important consensus” on the border issue. He called on the Indian side “not to take any action that may complicate the border issue and stick to the general orientation of resolving the issue through negotiations to maintain the overall growth of bilateral relations.”
He emphasised that China places importance on developing relations with India. He said the two countries share broad prospects on cooperation at various levels.
‘I was uncovering a Rs. 10,000-cr. scam’
Santanu Saikia, a former journalist and now an energy consultant running a website, who has been arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the Oil Ministry document theft case, said on Saturday that he was trying to uncover a Rs. 10,000-crore scam.
“I am being framed. Please quote me on this,” Mr. Saikia told presspersons who gathered outside the Crime Branch office here as policemen took him in for interrogation.
His statement has come at a time when the police said the documents seized from corporate executives related to “national security” could attract provisions of the Official Secrets Act.
Reacting to his claim, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Saikia was trying for a cover-up. “Let him spill out all the information he has. The primary accusation is that somebody stole the papers from the Ministry. Police are investigating. Anybody has the right to tell everything to the police,” he said.
States back easier land acquisition process
The BJP believes it has the backing of the States on the Land Acquisition Ordinance after holding meetings with several State revenue secretaries who all demanded that the process of acquiring land for major projects be made easier.
Several well-known names like Medha Patkar and RSS ideologue K.N. Govindacharya will join the Delhi protests that will start at Jantar Mantar on Monday. The Congress is scheduled to plan its own agitations while the Opposition parties are likely to unite in Parliament against the ordinance.
The focus of attention, however, will be activist Anna Hazare on his first major comeback to the capital to agitate on a national issue. The question on everyone’s mind is whether the original anti-corruption crusader is still a relevant figure and whether he can build a space for the Opposition around the land ordinance agitation.
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta says that it will be difficult to recreate the effects of the anti-corruption movement since land acquisition is essentially a rural concern.
“The anti-corruption movement is about civic services which concern everybody but is more an urban concern since it is linked to aspiration. With land acquisition you do not have the same profile of people as it doesn’t affect everybody,” he says.
AAP leader Yogendra Yadav says that the coming together of different agitating groups is a coincidence that has given the impression of a planned and concerted effort against the government. He argues that this has happened because the government is so much in the wrong over the proposed ordinance but at the same time doesn’t see it as a space for Opposition unity. “Ï do not see a major political realignment taking place on this question that involves the Aam Aadmi Party,” he told The Hindu .
Political scientist P.K. Datta of Delhi University argues on the other hand, that while the anti-corruption movemen’s popularity owes much to the large participation of the middle class the land acquisition issue could potentially affect the lives of more people.
India, Russia sort out differences on project
India and Russia have generally agreed upon the amount and division of work during the research and development (R&D) stage of the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project.
A contract for the R&D phase is being prepared and expected to be signed this year, said Yuli Slyusar, president and chairman of Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) at Aero India 2015 in Bengaluru.
“The Russian and Indian parties have generally agreed on the work share of each,” said company officials but refused to divulge specific details at this stage.
The work share of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has been a contentious issue as the project will have equal investment between India and Russia and is likely to cost over $30 billion for about 400 aircraft. India plans to induct 144 of them.
But HAL’s share in the work has been limited to a meagre 13 per cent so far which will not build any critical technological gains. Both sides have been holding discussions to sort this out before the final agreement.
FGFA is crucial for Indian Air Force’s evolving structure as was recently acknowledged by the air chief recently. The final announcement could come later this year with President Pranab Mukherjee visiting Moscow in June, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi expected to visit Russia twice.
Pachauri not to attend IPCC meet in Nairobi
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said on Saturday that its Chairman, R.K. Pachauri, had expressed his inability to go to Nairobi next week for chairing its plenary session, apparently in the wake of a complaint of sexual harassment against him.
“The Chairman of IPCC, Rajendra K. Pachauri, has informed the IPCC that he will be unable to chair the plenary session of the IPCC in Nairobi next week because of issues demanding his attention in India,” the IPCC said in a statement here.
This comes after the Delhi Police registered a case of molestation and sexual harassment against him on a complaint from a research associate working in his office. — PTI
Pakistan’s plutonium plant ‘operational’
Pakistan may now be on the fast track to weaponising spent nuclear fuel through its plutonium reprocessing plant in Chashma in Punjab, according to recent satellite imagery, which indicates that all the ongoing construction around a tall building, suspected to be the reprocessing facility in question, has been completed.
Increased capability
In its report, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think tank here, said that while the operational status of this reprocessing plant was yet to be confirmed, “satellite imagery signatures suggest it may have recently become operational, [a development that] would significantly increase Pakistan’s plutonium separation capability and ability to make nuclear weapons.”
Speaking to The Hindu one of the report’s authors, Serena Vergantini, said that ISIS had determined from open source information that there was a plan to build a reprocessing plant at Chashma several years ago although it was difficult to know which building was the reprocessing facility.
However, in 2007, ISIS located a tall building in a site southwest of the Chashma Nuclear Power Complex, which incidentally hosts Chinese-supplied nuclear power reactors, where “a considerable amount of construction” had taken place between 2002 and 2005, including ponds nearby excavated, roads paved and a potential plutonium management building and waste facility built nearby.
The latest satellite imagery obtained by ISIS through Digital Global indicates that all such construction work appears complete, which makes it most likely that the reprocessing facility is “close to complete,” and “possibly operational,” Ms. Vergantini noted.
Last month, another ISIS report had hinted that Pakistan may have accelerated its covert nuclear weapons development programme and rendered operational a nuclear reactor structure located at its Khushab plant, some 120 km by road from the Chashma site.
However given the plutonium output from the Khushab reactors’, Islamabad, needed to find a way to chemically separate it from the irradiated reactor fuel, a complex process requiring plutonium reprocessing plants. When its contract to receive such a plant from France was cancelled by suppliers in France in the mid-1970s, Pakistan constructed a small indigenous facility near Rawalpindi.
Although it came online to reprocess plutonium after Pakistan brought into operation its first Khushab reactor in 1998, the three additional reactors there were possibly producing more irradiated fuel than the Rawalpindi plant could handle, prompting the “secret” construction of the Chashma plutonium separation plant.
Colombo to seek U.N. backing for domestic probe
Sri Lanka’s newly elected government will next month look to win United Nations backing for a domestic probe into alleged war crimes under former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, an official said on Saturday.
The investigation, which the new administration had promised after winning January elections, comes after the previous regime resisted a U.N. inquiry into claims that up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed under Mr. Rajapaksa’s command in the final months of a war that ended in May 2009.
Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera will travel to Geneva next month to meet U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It gave no details, but an official told AFP that the new Sri Lankan administration was keen to get his backing for the investigation.
“Minister Samaraweera wants to brief the Human Rights Council about the new steps that Sri Lanka wishes to take,” an official said, asking not to be named. “Sri Lanka is looking for about two months to establish a new [domestic] mechanism.”
Publication of report
The government has pledged a credible, independent investigation that may draw on foreign expertise and experience.
Last week, the U.N. postponed the publication of an eagerly-awaited report on an U.N.-mandated war crimes probe into Sri Lanka’s brutal separatist war, giving the new government time to prove its bona fides.
Mr. Zeid’s office in a statement last week said the report, which had been scheduled to be presented to the Human Rights Council early next month, would be published by September. — AFP
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