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MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY, Commerce and Supplies Purna Bahadur Khadka organized a meeting here Tuesday with ambassadors of the WTO member countries with the objective of sharing with them the state of Nepal’s WTO membership. At the meeting, Minister Khadka said Nepal has been making effort to join the WTO with the objective of enjoying the benefits of liberalization by affiliating the country’s national economy with the multi-sector trade system. Nepal is fully committed to the principles of the world trade organization, but there is a compulsion of adopting some flexibility in the policy as a result of some difficulties like the country’s minimal standard of development, dependency on traditional technology, absence of basic infrastructures, minimum means and resources, and geographical remoteness. Bilateral talks on market accessibility in the WTO member countries showing interest in Nepal’s trade and the meeting of the task force in course of Nepal’s joining WTO is to be held in Geneva from September 9 to 13. Minister Khadka will lead the Nepali delegation in the task force meeting. THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) will provide 15 million euros per year in aid to Nepal over the next five years, to support democracy and help Bhutanese refugees, reports said. European Commission President Romano Prodi informed this to visiting Nepalese premier Sher Bahadur Deuba in Brussels Tuesday. On August 19, the EC had announced grant assistance worth Rs 46.5 million to Nepal. The package aimed at reducing the impact of the current conflict on long term European Union (EU) assistance programmes. The EU said the assistance was a response to the growing instability in the country due to the Maoist insurgency. ROYAL NEPALESE ARMY (RNA) personnel guarding the Royal Chitwan National Park (RCNP) have shot dead at least six persons believed to be poachers Monday night. The security force confirmed that those shot dead were poachers out to hunt rhinos in the area.† The incident took place near Sauraha where the security personnel recovered a tool used in rhino poaching, including some bullets from the site of incident. All those killed have been identified as Nepalese nationals with past records of being involved in poaching. THE GENEVA-BASED United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has provided assistance worth Rs 21.99 million for the victims of recent floods and landslides in Nepal, an announcement said. The fund will be used primarily for the transportation of relief materials to different disaster affected areas of the country. Similarly, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have signed an agreement for a two-year pilot project ‘Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Development, the UN agency said. The project, to be managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology, will examine ways of providing rural communities with ICT. Under the project, a total of 15 pilot rural telecenters will be set up in nine districts to give communities shared access to the technology, reports said Wednesday. THE GOVERNMENT HAS issued directives for the constitution of local committees so as to make the work of local bodies easier. Under the Local Governance Act 1998, committees have been constituted with the VDC secretary as head of the Village Development Committee, executive officer of the municipality as its head and Local Development Officer as head of the District Development Committee. Other members in the village committee will be representatives from agriculture, veterinary or health offices in the same VDC or Ilaka (area) whereas in the municipality, officers from district infrastructure development, public health, internal revenue and District Administration Office will remain as the members. THE CIVIL AVIATION Authority of Nepal (CAAN) on Thursday banned flights that operate on Special Visual flight Regulation (VFR) except for five airports with effect from Friday. A statement issued by CAAN said the decision was taken to make air safety more effective. The exempted airports are the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Bhairahawa, Simra and Nepalgunj, the last four towns situated in the Terai (plains). The CAAN decision came in the wake of two recent air disasters within the kingdom in which altogether 22 persons were killed.
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