Monday, December 7, 2009

Iran, India, Pakistan gas-pipeline talks likely to be held in January

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EHRAN - India, Pakistan and Iran are likely to hold trilateral talks on the gas pipeline project in January.

Iranian Oil Minister’s special representative for Peace Pipeline Project, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, said that the talks might resume in January since India declared it is ready to resume trilateral talks on the venture.

He also referred to gas talks held between Iran and Pakistan in Tehran and said representatives of Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas producer, have taken part in talks.

Dialogues mainly focused on the Peace Pipeline operation agreement and main points of gas transit to India, he said.

Iran is to pipe its natural gas to Pakistan to meet the country’s needs. The gas will be supplied from Iran’s South pars field. (ANI)

Government official abducted in Manipur

A senior state government engineer was abducted by unidentified militants in Manipur, police said on Sunday.

"L Dhaballo, an executive engineer of the Manipur Public Health and Engineering department, was kidnapped by unknown militants on Friday," a police spokesman said. The official was abducted while he was returning from his office at Khoyathang to his home in Imphal East district.

"The ultras have demanded Rs.5 crore for his release," he said.

Three government officials, including two engineers, have been kidnapped by militants in the past one month in Imphal's East district.

Suspected Naga militant injured in encounter with CRPF

A suspected Naga militant was injured in an encounter with CRPF personnel in Upper Assam's Golaghat district, near the Nagaland border, official sources said on Sunday.

The militant Bokoho Sema was injured in the exchange fire with CRPF personnel at Uriumghat in Sector C of the district on Saturday night.

Sema along with two others came in an vehicle without a number plate to escort a person before the encounter, sources said.

A 9-MM pistol and three rounds of ammunition were seized from Sema, who is now under going medical treatment at the Golaghat civil hospital. Search operations were launched to nab the two others who fled away, the sources added.

Paresh claims moral win for Ulfa

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rom 1.15 am on Friday — when United Liberation Front of Asom chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and nine others ‘surrendered’ — till 5.27 pm on Saturday, the government had the upperhand in the offensive against the outfit.

But for 25 minutes after he was produced in the court at 5.28 pm, the Ulfa scored a moral victory, or so its ‘commander-in-chief’ Paresh Barua has claimed. This, barely 24 hours after he emailed media houses asking Rajkhowa if he had surrendered.

“Rajkhowa’s assertion at the Kamrup Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court that he has not surrendered and will not hold talks with the government in handcuffs is a moral victory for us,” said Barua, believed to be the last man standing in the Ulfa.

“The pro-Ulfa cries from bystanders while they (Rajkhowa and others) were being taken to court, shows our support base has not eroded as the government claims,” he added.

Rajkhowa’s assertion that he did not surrender followed a meeting of home ministry officials who came from New Delhi on Friday. He and two others — Ulfa deputy commander-in-chief Raju Barua and Rajkhowa’s bodyguard Raja Bora — were held after they declined to talk without the issue of Assam’s sovereignty on agenda.

The Assam assembly session will begin on Monday, where these recent developments are likely to take front seat.

The next step in Assam

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re peace talks with the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) possible minus its “commander-in-chief” Paresh Barua? And without the issue of Assam’s sovereignty on the negotiating table?

Unlikely, Barua’s former comrades, sympathisers and arrested leaders say. But security analysts and conflict specialists are optimistic on two counts — the outfit is “no longer in a position to bargain” and the “stage is set” for its political wing to take over from the military wing.

The issue has assumed importance after Ulfa chief Arabinda Rajkhowa was arrested. So long there was little perspective on the way forward on the Assam issue because the Centre had no one to talk to. Now the “civilian leadership” of Ulfa is likely to be distanced from the “military” leadership.

“We have always maintained Ulfa is a political problem, and its solution can only be political,” said D.B. Shekhatkar, who was chief of the army’s Tezpur-based 4th Corps in anti-Ulfa operations.

Ulfa indeed was a civil-political organisation until the military wing, under Barua, virtually took over in 1990, when the first army offensive — Operation Bajrang — was launched. Barua, Rajkhowa and four others had formed Ulfa on April 7, 1979.

Barua was one of six members of the military wing in Ulfa’s decision-making, 16-member central executive committee (CEC).

“Paresh Barua is third in the Ulfa hierarchy after Rajkhowa and vice-chairman Pradip Gogoi, who is in Guwahati Jail. And all the other CEC members of the outfit’s political wing are in jail or police custody. So there’s no reason why Barua cannot be sidestepped for the vanquished peace process to start,” said Noni Gopal Mahanta, head of Gauhati University’s Institute of Conflict Management.

Vanquished? “Because Ulfa is not in a position to bargain, unlike in 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the government was ready to talk on all core issues. What was left unsaid then was that core the issue includes the issue of sovereignty,” Mahanta added.

Barua, for one, has negated the theory that he comes in the way of peace talks. “It does not matter whether or not I come into the picture. What matters is if colonial India is ready to talk sovereignty,” he said via email. Sovereignty was one of 30-year-old Ulfa’s three preconditions for talks; it had long dropped the other two -- discussion in a foreign country and mediation by the United Nations.

On the eve of Singh’s visit to Russia, the Centre maintains that “sovereignty” for Assam is not negotiable.

According to senior advocate Arup Barbora, a member of the Peoples Consultative Group that Ulfa had set up in 2005 to mediate for talks, an “egoistic” Indian bureaucracy is stalling the peace process.

“If the government can talk to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) despite its insistence on sovereignty, there’s no reason the Ulfa issue cannot be handled similarly. Discussing sovereignty does not mean granting it, particularly when New Delhi is ready to talk to all Kashmiri groups, some of which are rigid about secession. Why the Janus-faced (hypocritical) approach for Ulfa?” he said.

Tarun Gogoi’s government too is in favour of a mechanism that suits both New Delhi and Ulfa. “The idea is to start the dialogue, with or without Paresh Barua,” said a top government official.

That a move is on to give preference to the political wing headed by the “more respectable (within Ulfa)” Rajkhowa is apparent from what Mrinal Hazarika had to say. Hazarika, arrested from Siliguri in 2005, is chief of Ulfa’s breakaway pro-talks group. “The government should facilitate the meeting of our General Council soon,” said Hazarika.

Ulfa’s constitution says the sovereignty of Assam is not negotiable unless decided by the General Council involving all members of the outfit. This council has not met for more than 10 years now.

No proposal to open up Nathu La for tourism: Selja

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here is no proposal to open up the Sino-India frontier at Nathu La for tourism purposes but the Centre has relaxed the guidelines under the Restricted Area Permit for domestic tourists, Union Tourism Minister Kumari Selja said on Sunday.

The Inner Line Permit for foreign tourists in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh has also been relaxed to provide extended stay for visitors, she said. The relaxation of protected area, restricted area and inner line permit regime will boost tourist inflow, she added.

Selja's statement comes as a dampener for Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling, who has been repeatedly asking the Centre to consider opening up Nathu La for international tourists.

Chamling had said the opening of Nathu La corridor for tourism will bring in much-needed domestic revenue to the border state, and at the same time will cement bilateral relations between the country and China.

The Chief Minister had earlier succeeded in pursuading the Centre to reopen bilateral trade at Nathu La three years ago after a gap of 44 years.