June 22, 2005

POKHARA: President of the Nepali Congress Girija Prasad Koirala today said the democratic forces had launched the agitation for total democracy to place the King in a respectable position for ever. Warning that democratic and republican forces would forge an alliance against the regime if it continued to ignore the agitation, Koirala said the agitation would not end until the people were made sovereign for ever. Addressing a mass meeting organised by the All-party People’s Movement Coordination Committee, Kaski, in Chipledhunga of Pokhara, Koirala defined the concept of total democracy as a situation in which the future generation would not need to go for an agitation for democracy. Koirala said the agitation was a fight between the modern era and the feudal era, adding the feudalists would collapse once democracy was restored. CPN (UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal said limited rights and guided democracy were not acceptable to the people. “Partial democracy will not be acceptable in any case,” he said. Claiming full international backing for the seven-party movement, Nepal said it was the Nepali people who have the responsibility to take the movement to a new height.

Ex-super cop turns spiritual soldier

KATHMANDU: Time was when DR Karthikeyan, former director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), was busy as a bee heading tough investigations like the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and barking orders. Now with plenty of time on hand, he tours famous tourism and holy shrines in Europe, America, Middle East, and South Asia promoting religious tourism.

Yesterday’s super cop has metamorphosed into a man of religion. He wears the religious cap with the same panache and fervour as he did his khakhi cap, and goes about promoting the cause of peace with missionary zeal. Having arrived in Kathmandu from Tibet, Kathikeyan met this scribe at hotel Hyatt Regency.

He said he was delighted when people easily accepted his message of religious and communal goodwill in several sacred shrines in the Middle East, which were once tense. Conflict-hit Nepal should first focus on saving the nation as conflict only begets trouble, he said.

He said he was pained to hear the current conflict has taken a toll of around 15,000 lives. “The conflict and the violence must end; there is no alternative to peace,” he said.

Extreme positions, whether political or religious, would not do any good to anybody and as such governments and people of conflict-hit nations should do solve disagreements between themselves and work to restore brotherhood, love and peace, he said.