Prime Minister Koirala & Millennium Summit
For A UN With New Vision

By Jagadish B. Mathema

PRIME Minister Girija Prasad Koirala left on September 3 to participate in the Millennium Summit at the United Nations, scheduled to be held from September 6-9.

A total of approximately 150 Heads of State and Government will be attending this Millennium Summit.

Respect

Nepal, since 1955—the year she became the member of this August body — has shown great respect of the Charter of the United Nations and has also contributed in a humble way by sending Nepalese troops to various troubled places of the world in peace keeping missions.

Following Second World War, United Nations was founded in 1945. The main objective of the United Nations is to try to avert conflicts between the nation of the world, settle disputes by dialogue as well as to help accelerate economic development of the world, which will be implemented by various agencies of the United Nations.

Although United Nations has sometimes been criticised for its failure to maintain world peace, we must agree to the fact that the United Nations has been successful in averting the great wars such as 1 st and 2nd World War.

This Millennium Summit offers an opportunity for reflection, where the Heads of State and Government assembled at the U.N. Headquarters will address and participate in the plenary and interactive sessions of the UN in this twenty first century . In the context of the changed scenario, in the beginning of the Third Millennium the Heads of State and Government should focus on the issues such as restructuring the United Nations, the directions that the United Nations should take in view of this changed context, take up current issues and challenges that the United Nations should take into consideration and try to find out solutions in solving these issues and problems.

Besides, it is hoped that this Millennium Summit will prepare future strategies and will carry out effectively the plan of action which 150 Heads of State and Government will devise, will give emphasis to solve multifarious problems and difficult issues of the developing countries so that the tremendous economic and other gaps in social sector can be filled up in the coming days.

According to the communique issued by the Foreign Ministry, Nepal will mention the issues such as poverty alleviation , various issues that have been raised during non-aligned conferences related with world peace and security, economic development, expansion of permanent members as well as non- permanent members in the Security Council and the role that has to be played by the developing countries etc. Nepal, being one of the founder member of the Non-Aligned Movement will definitely raise the issues voiced in the non -aligned nations belonging to non- aligned countries in the various summits held in the past.

Foreign Minister Chakra Prasad Bastola, in his interview given to "Gorkhapatra" a daily vernacular has said" the time has come for restructuring of the UN taking note of the issues raised by the Third World countries, and the reforms to be initiated in the UN. Nepal will give priority in these issues during Millennium Summit of the UN. Nepal will emphasize on topics such as fight against poverty globally, world peace and security, and the initiation towards economic and social form front of the developing countries world - wide.

Nepal will also voice with regard to the expansion for permanent as well as non permanent members of the Security Council. At present, there are five permanent members USA, Russia , UK, France and China. Since countries such as Germany, Japan and India have emerged as strong economic powers, the views expressed by these countries in the expansion of members in the Security Council hold much water. At present, non permanent members serve every two years by rotation. Nepal has already served in 1968/1969 and 1988/89 as non -permanent member in the United Nations.

Nepal has demonstrated her commitments in various issues such as discrimination of the coloured people i.e aprarthied, total disarmament and destroying the nuclear weapons, world peace and the alleviation of proverty. During Koirala’s stay in the United States he will try to meet Nepalese residing in the various parts of the US.

Mr. Koirala, besides engaging in the above activities, will also participate in the Millennium Summit interactive round table, reception hosted by Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori reception to be hosted by the US President Bill Clinton, luncheon discussion to be hosted by Asia Society, reception hosted by Murari Raj Sharma, Permanent Representative of Nepal in the United Nations etc.

Prime Minister Koirala will also address the Millennium Summit at the United Nations. He will also meet the Nepalese community residing in New York at the Columbia University hall. P.M Koirala is scheduled to leave New York for Geneva in the same evening.

In Geneva, Prime Minister Koirala will preside over a meeting of the Europe-based Royal Nepalese Ambassadors and visit Palais Des Nations. In addition to this Prime Minister Koirala has plans to meet United Nations High Commissioner. Mr. Mary Robinsion and Ms. Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Prime Minister Koirala will leave Geneva for Hannover, Germany and visit Expo- 2000 and the Nepalese pavilion. He will also attend a welcome ceremony organised by the Lord Mayor of Hannover at the Hannover Town hall and will also sign the golden book of the city of Hannover. He will leave Hannover for Frankfurt and will leave Frankfurt for Kathmandu of September 15. He is scheduled to arrive in Kathmandu on Sept.16

Benefit

It is believed that P. M Koirala’s visit to UN to attend Millenniume Summit will bring greater benefit to Nepal from various UN agencies operating under the agencies of the UN. There will be an increased involvement of the agencies such as U.N. D. P, FAO, ESCAP, UNESCO, etc which will definitely help in the overall development of the economic and social sectors of Nepal.

Third Generation Of Mobile Communication System

By Manish Shrestha

THIRD Generation (3G) is the generic term used for the next generation of mobile communications systems. 3G systems will provide enhanced services to those—such as voice, text and data predominantly available today. The International Mobile Telecommunication-year 2000 (IMT2000) is ITU’s standard for 3rd generation of mobile communications. Several organisations from Europe, Japan, USA, Korea and China have contributed towards the development of IMT2000 standards.

Difference

There are a lot of differences between 2nd generation (2G) of mobile communication system used in Nepal and 3rd generation of mobile communication system. The main difference is in capacity. Traffic handling capacity of 3G is a lot more than 2G system. Moreover, the data transfer speed in 3G is much more higher than 2G systems. 3G systems can handle data traffic at a speed of upto 384 kilo bytes per second (kbps) at high speed and upto 2 megabytes per second at pedestrian speed as compared to 9.6 kbps in 2G systems.

The exponentially increasing use of Internet and the convergence of mobile communication system with Internet has created need for higher capacity or bandwidth for mobile communications. In the present society mobility has become very important, both in professional and social life. Thus people want to have information, be it professional (like stock prices, access to the company’s internet etc.) or social (like location of a restaurant in a new city) anywhere and anytime. People want to have similar facilities or services with mobile phones as they are able to do with computer and Internet. Some of these services like electronic banking, electronic stock brokering, e-commerce have become quite popular in developed countries while other application like web browsing, e-mail etc. have become quite popular even in developing countries like Nepal thanks to the decreasing price for using Internet.

But people have to stay in front of the computer to enjoy this services. With increasing mobility people want to get rid of this limitation. 3G technology is being developed to make it possible for the people to enjoy similar services in mobile phones as they have been able to enjoy with the computer and Internet. One typical example video transfer. If a person is visiting a new place, he can connect his video camera with his/her mobile phone and transfer the picture to the computer at home of office in actual time. 3G will be able to provide a wide range of new services to the people which is not possible with 2G technology of today.

With the new applications and services the use of data communications is expected to grow exponentially while growth in voice communication will be negligible in future. It means that mobile phones have become more that a simple device people use to talk with each other. People can do a lot of other things like getting weather information, stock prices etc. than just making phone calls with the mobile phones. With improved 2G systems like GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) it is possible to increase the data transfer speed upto 100 kbps. But it will still not be enough to meet the capacity requirement of future. 3G technology is expected to provide the necessary capacity to transfer huge amount of data over the air interface.

Though attempts were made to have a single technology for the 3G system, unfortunately it could not succeed. Currently we have three major 3G technologies. The first 3G technology is Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). Another 3G technology is CDMA2000 (Code Division Multiple Access 2000) which evolves from CDMA a technology that is more popular in North America. The third 3G technology is called Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TDSCDMA) is being developed by China and companies like Siemens. This technology is also backward compatible to GSM.

In a country like Nepal with very low penetration rate of phones (fixed and mobile) and Internet users, 3G technology might not have direct relevance for next few years. But it might have some indirect implications.

As 3G technology is in the beginning of technology life cycle, developed countries might focus more on it and transfer the technology for mature 2G technologies to developing countries like China and India. Thus we many expect that the prices of GSM infrastructure equipment and handset will decrease in future. It is difficult to say when it will happen as UMTS technology will take at least 5 years to pick up in the same level of GSM is today. However, when the price goes down it will be easy for countries like Nepal to increase the penetration rate.

3G will be undoubtedly the dominant future technology for mobile communications and it will require a lot of manpower for technology developments, application and new services development installations, testing, operations etc. Thus it may provide good opportunities for Nepalese professionals like Telecom engineers, IT professionals etc. provided that we can properly prepare them to meet with the new challenges of 3G technology.

Need

3G is the mobile for the next generation of mobile communications systems that is capable of providing enhanced services with better efficiency of radio resources to the users as compared to 2G system. 3G system is no longer a talk only. With Commercial systems starting from next year it is quite near to become a reality. Though 3G Technology might not have direct relevance for developing countries like Nepal in terms of using the technology in near future, it might provide some good opportunities for the Nepalese profe-ssionals associated with Telecommu-nications and IT field.