After China, Prachanda to visit US?

(IANS)

After his controversial visit to China within less than a week of assuming office as republic Nepal's first prime minister, will Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda now snub India further and make the US his next port of call abroad?

Even as a controversy rages in Nepal and India about ...

The 63rd session of the UN General Assembly begins in the Big Apple Sept 16 and it is felt that Prachanda, who was keen to attend the summit of regional bloc SAARC in Colombo last month, could head the Nepali delegation.

Should that be the case, then he would have precious little time to accept Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's invitation to visit New Delhi prior to the New York trip since a series of crises await him home after his return from Beijing Wednesday.

Prachanda's immediate task would be to pacify his aggrieved ally, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML). The UML, despite backing him during the tough prime ministerial race earlier this month, refused to join the Maoist-led government and boycotted the oath-taking ceremony after the former guerrillas tried to grab the post of deputy prime minister as well.

Now with the UML threatening to sit in opposition, the Maoists face the grave danger of the communists once again joining forces with the chief opposition party, former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala's Nepali Congress (NC), to defeat a Maoist-led government just as they had defeated the Maoist candidate in the presidential election in July.

Besides appeasing the communists, Prachanda has to also address the ravages wreaked by the flood in south Nepal, which left over 75,000 people in Nepal homeless and nearly three million more in the Indian state of Bihar across the border.

Nepal and India need to urgently prop up the tottering dam on the Saptakoshi river, woo the river back to its old course and rehabilitate the flood-hit.

Nepal also has to improve its relations with India, already strained by the natural calamity and Prachanda's China visit.

Nepal's political parties are blaming the Bihar government for the calamity, saying it failed to maintain the dam and repair the damaged supporting spurs in time. The UML issued a statement, saying the Indian government should be asked to pay compensation for the extensive damage in Nepal.

Upon his return to Kathmandu Wednesday, Prachanda began making soothing sounds to gloss over the rift created by his Beijing trip.

The Beijing visit was meant to attend the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games and had no political overtones, said Prachanda, who however had met Chinese President Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao during his four-day trip.

Nepal's state media also said he had invited both to visit Nepal, an invitation that is yet to be issued to the Indian PM or president.

'My first formal and political visit to India would be a political one,' Prachanda said upon his arrival at the Tribhuvan International Airport. 'We forged the 12-point agreement (with other political parties to bring down King Gyanendra's regime in 2006) in India,' he said.

'Because of that and other geographic and cultural relations, my visit to India would have political connotation.

After China, Prachanda to visit US?Conducting foreign policy is quite different from slaughtering innocent people. It should have now dawned on Prachanda, the murderer-in-chief of Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist. Statecraft is a respectable domain that always demands perspicacity, intelligence, brilliance and, above all, sensibility towards the ever-changing reality of time. These are some of the attributes that politicos develop in due course of time by making themselves accountable to the people and committed to certain principles essentially based on humanity and human values. Prachanda and his 'butchers in arm' have never done anything that humanity can be proud of. Instead, they have added a new chapter in the history of excesses committed on humans by even surpassing the Nazis when it comes to ruthlessness and brutality. While in jungle, they sucked the blood of thousands of innocent Nepalese just like rabid hyenas. Now they are at the helm of power sheer on the strength of murder, terror, extortion and intimidation. Even after having assumed the power, they seem quite confused not only about the conduct of foreign policy. The steadily worsening relations with other political forces evidently exposes their pitiable vacuity. Nepal, as is besieged by almost insurmountable problems, cannot be fixed overnight. It is a long and time-consuming process that inexorably demands a clarity of vision and precision of thought. The Maoist leadership, on all these counts, is woefully naive and asinine. It is really unfortunate that Nepal, otherwise a peaceful country, has been a hostage at the hands of a bunch of murderers whose thirst for blood seems unquenchable.