본문

Slowly, after many years of fierce fighting for democracy, something is changing in Nepal..

eKantipur published following..

Anyone who dares to underestimate Proclamation will face dire consequences: PM Koirala

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala said Thursday that if anyone dares to underestimate the House Proclamation 2063, will face dire consequences.

GEFONT.s, General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions, comment..

Nepali People Become Sovereign Finally!

In the modern History of Nepal, today (May 18) is the historic day of Victory never witnessed before. Through the Proclamation tabled by the Prime minister, the reinstated House of Representatives declared a historical declaration.

This proclamation, which fully transfers the power of King to Parliament, may be compared to Magna Carta.

Let's celebrate our Victory together!!

And more they wrote..

GEFONT National Council welcomes HoR Proclamation; urges Nepal Government to declare Jeth 04 as the Loktantrik Day

General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT) National Council meeting concluded today adopting various resolutions.
The Council-

• Welcomes and supports today's Proclamation of Hose of Representatives which fully establishes Nepali Peoples' sovereignty as the sources of state-power.
• Requests Nepal Government to announce Jeth 04 (May 18) as the Loktantrik Day to be celebrated every year.
• Proposes the Nepal Government led by SPA to formulate and execute every policy collectively, despite previous practice of running ministries differently according to the own policy of leading parties of the coalition.
• Pays tribute to the martyrs of the Loktantrik movement and extends condolence to the bereaved families.
• Extends best wish for the fast health recovery of the injured comrades-in- movement and demands for the proper relief arrangement with due compensation.
• Demands for the stern action against those who suppressed the movement brutally
• Endorses the on going initiatives of Single unionism considering a goal of Dignifying Working class and prosperous life.
• Calls for the trade union wing of CPN (Maoist) to come forward in legitimate spirit and ask to join mainstream of Single Union Initiatives
• Extends heartiest thanks to all workers, their families, our members and affiliates for their heroic participation and contribution in the Loktantrik movement.
• Instructs all affiliates and local structures to start series of discussion on effective participation and inclusion of workers during the process of Constituent Assembly election and afterwards in the new Loktantra.
• Urges to HoR to create a legitimate body in the ownership of SPA, CPN (Maoist), Civil Society Organisations including the trade union to function as the consultative political body for Nepal Government prior to the election of Constituent Assembly
• Requests to ensure "No unelected Customary Power in the name of Divinity may rule over Sovereign People"
• Appeals on behalf of working class to ensure the inclusion of gender, ethnicity and regional diversity based on Class structure of Nepali society
• Urges CPN (Maoist) and SPA in order to guarantee of sustainable peace and radical transformation through the process of dialogue based on 12-point understanding with a view to establish Loktantra and to end the violent war
• Demands to provide wages of period of general strike during the Loktantrik  movement and for immediate operation of closed and sick industries

The Council reviewed the past political and organisational activities and endorse the programme for next tabled by GEFONT Secretariat.

CPN (UML) General Secretary addressed the Council as the principle speaker.

The meeting presided by Chairman Mukunda Neupane; where the summary report of the Secretariat was tabled by the Secretary General Binod Shrestha.

GEFONT National Council meets annually. It is the powerful body between two Congresses, which guides the National Executive Committee on Policies and Programmes.

http://www.gefont.org/summary.asp?flag=3&cid=164

BBC NEWS..

Vote to curb Nepal king's powers

CNN..

Nepal king stripped of most powers

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

But as you can see, the struggle is not finished, not at all..

Government to prohibit rallies

Government on Wednesday has decided to prohibit protest rallies and gatherings around the Royal Palace and Singh Durbar.

본문

IHT, NYT published yesterday following article..

U.S. may try new bid for North Korea deal

President George W. Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty even while efforts to dismantle its nuclear program are still under way, according to senior administration officials and Asian diplomats.   Aides say Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear programs. The talks have been stalled since September.   North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.   For several years after he first took office, Bush vowed not to end North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantling took place.   Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.   The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration's discussions of what to do next said, "There is a sense that they can't leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become - a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure."   But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talks of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.   With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea's government will either disarm or collapse during Bush's remaining time in office. Increasingly, they blame two of Bush's negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.   In Bush's first term, he said repeatedly that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses it. Instead, he has held meetings in the Oval Office with escapees from the North and used those events to discuss its prison camps and its treatment of its people.   Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding regime change from people like Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.   "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue," Kissinger wrote in a long essay that appeared Tuesday in The Washington Post. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Bosnian peace accords, Kissinger said, "Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed."   A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials this year, concluded that the North has probably created enough fuel for more than half a dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Bush's administration and is continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year.   But in a show of caution after the discovery of flaws in intelligence on Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.   With the six-nation negotiations appearing to go nowhere, the drive to come up with a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.   Those papers touched off what one senior official called "a blizzard of debate" over the next steps that eventually included Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as having led the drive in Bush's first term to make sure the North received no concessions from the United States until all its weapons and weapon sites were taken apart.   It is unclear where Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.   Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."   The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."   An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks - the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia - commits the North to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "at an early date" but leaves vague what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps to aid the North.   It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Bush, declaring that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.   As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Bush's aides envision starting negotiations on a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice: China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations.   They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.   Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.   A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North.   In justifying its refusal to return to talks, the North Koreans have complained bitterly about financial sanctions by the United States aimed at closing down the North's banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia.   Officials said that even if peace treaty negotiations started, those sanctions would continue.   Some intelligence officials say they believe the North's complaints may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, including the money he spends for entertainment.   http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/18/news/norkor.php       The rightwing daily Chosun Ilbo is writing following..   U.S. ‘to Shift N.Korea Approach to Peace Talks’ The U.S. is considering a new policy for approaching North Korea that would simultaneously seek to deal with bringing the North back to six-party talks on their nuclear ambitions, as well as discuss changing the armistice put in place after the Korean War, to a peace treaty, reported the New York Times on Thursday. "The idea seems to have been borne of a recognition in the U.S. of criticism that they have painted North Korea into a corner,” said Prof. Kim Sung-han of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. Washington has so far been hoping to box the North in from all sides with pressure over its human rights record and alleged financial crimes - an approach South Korea has been unhappy about. But U.S. President George W. Bush is reportedly adamant that the overriding requirement is that the North come back to the six-nation negotiating table and give up its nuclear ambitions. If this happens, negotiations on a peace treaty could happen separately from the six-party talks. That is already outlined in a joint statement agreed in the six-party talks in September last year, which says any peace treaty will be discussed “in another forum.” The South Korean Foreign Ministry’s North America bureau head Cho Tae-yong said, “This is not a new idea. It’s similar to what our government has been insisting on all along.” Thus if Pyongyang returns to the six-party talks, there are likely to be two forums, one addressing the nuclear problem and one a peace framework. The New York Times says the U.S. is considering a four-party framework for peace negotiations bringing together South and North Korea, the U.S. and China. Song Min-soon, Seoul’s chief presidential secretary for security policy and foreign affairs, said last year the six-party talks are the wrong place to discuss a peace framework. He added four-party talks that already got underway at one stage were a more likely setup. These had been proposed by former president Kim Young-sam and former U.S. president Bill Clinton at a summit in Jeju in April 1996, and three rounds took place through 1998. One carrot for North Korea’s return to the six-party talks is the eventual normalization of ties with the U.S. But no plans have been finalized, and it is especially unclear if the hawkish U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will countenance the plan. There is little chance that the Bush administration will drop the matter of North Korea’s human rights abuses and alleged counterfeiting, thus making the North’s swift return to the talks improbable.   http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200605/200605180025.html