Aug-2011-International

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Bhattarai sworn-in as Prime Minister of Nepal
Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai was sworn in as Nepal’s new Prime Minister on August 29, 2011. After taking over as the Prime Minister he said that he would work to complete the fragile peace process within six months and form a national unity government to bring political stability in the nascent republic.

The 57-year-old Jawaharlal Nehru University scholar ascends to the post at a crucial time in Nepal and faces the twin challenge of integrating and rehabilitating over 19,000 former Maoist guerrillas and preparing the first Constitution, two major conditions of a 2006 peace deal which ended a decade-long civil war that killed some 16,000 people.

Bhattarai said that he hoped to lead a consensus government to break the political deadlock that has stalled the peace process and delayed the drafting of a new constitution.

The Maoists with 236 seats are the largest party in Parliament but left power in May 2009 in a row over the dismissal of the then Nepal Army Chief Rukmangad Katawal.

Prachanda had dismissed Katawal after accusing him of undermining the civilian government. The Maoist supremo had quit after President Yadav reinstated Katawal.

London erupts over fatal police firing
London picked itself up on August 7, 2011, from some of the worst violence seen in the British capital in years, which politicians and police blamed on criminal thugs but residents attributed to local tensions and anger over rising financial hardship.

Rioters, throwing petrol bombs, rampaged overnight through an economically deprived district, setting police patrol cars, buildings and a double-decker bus on fire.

The riots erupted after a street protest over the fatal shooting of a man by armed officers.

The riots came amid deepening gloom in Britain with the economy struggling to grow amid deep public spending cuts and tax rises brought into help eliminate a budget deficit, which peaked at more than 10 per cent of the GDP.

Japan unveils $100-billion package to cope with Yen
On August 24, 2011, Japan unveiled a $100-billion effort to help companies cope with a surging yen, signalling that officials may be resigned to the currency remaining high. The government will release foreign-exchange reserves to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation for funding to aid exporters and spur purchases overseas, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters in Tokyo today. JBIC, as the lender is known, is a state-run export credit agency.

Japan has amassed $1.07 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, the world’s largest after China. The yen touched a post-war high of 75.95 per dollar on August 19 in New York.

The one-year funding program through the export credit agency is intended to encourage the private sector to exchange yen-denominated funds to foreign currencies by supporting exports by small and mid-sized companies, securing energy resources and helping Japanese companies to purchase foreign businesses.

The Bank of Japan applauded the finance ministry’s announcement, saying in a statement that the measures would “contribute to the stability” of currency markets.

Japan’s debt rating was lowered by Moody’s Investors Service, which cited “weak” prospects for economic growth that will make it difficult for the government to rein in the world’s largest public debt burden. The advancing yen is a “headwind against export competitiveness,” Moody’s said.

China blames Pak-trained militants for Xinjiang violence
On August 1, 2011, for the first time, China blamed Uyghur “militants” trained in Pakistan for the deadly violence in its restive Xinjiang province which left at least 20 persons dead in two days.

“The initial probe found that the group’s leaders had learned how to make explosives and firearms in overseas camps of the terrorist group, the East Turkmenistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Pakistan before entering Xinjiang to organise terrorist activities,” an official statement said.

While, it was no secret that China has been pressing Pakistan to crackdown on ETIM militants for a long time, but perhaps this was the first time that it chose to openly point finger at it, when Islamabad is reeling under pressure being exhorted by the US to carry out operations against Al-Qaida and Taliban.

The Xinjiang region remained a hot bed for extremism after massive riots by Muslim Uyghurs in the provincial capital Urmuqi in 2009 against the Chinese mainland Hans who settled down in the region in large numbers over the years. In Xinjiang, Uygurs constitute 41.5 per cent of its population, while Hans are about 40 per cent. The province borders eight countries, many of which, including PoK and Afghanistan, have been plagued by terrorism and targeted by the “East Turkistan” separatist forces.