I N T E R N AT I O N A L

BEIJING: China said yesterday that moretalks were needed to build a consensuson which countries can join the maingroup controlling access to sensitivenuclear technology, after a push by theUnited States to include India. China isseen as leading opposition to the USmove to include India in the 48-nationNuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), but oth-er countries, including New Zealand,Turkey, South Africa and Austria alsooppose Indian membership, accordingto diplomats.

The NSG aims to prevent the prolifera-tion of nuclear weapons by restrictingthe sale of items that can be used tomake those arms. India already enjoysmost of the benefits of membershipunder a 2008 exemption to NSG rulesgranted to support its nuclear coopera-tion deal with Washington, even thoughIndia has developed atomic weaponsand never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the main glob-al arms control pact.

“Large differences” remain over the

issue of non-NPT countries joining theNSG, Chinese Foreign Ministryspokesman Hong Lei said in an onlinestatement. “With regard to what to do onthe issue of non-NPT signatories joining(the NSG), China consistently supportshaving ample discussion on this to seekconsensus and agreement and come to aunanimous decision,” Hong said.

“The NPT is the political and legalbasis for the entire international non-pro-liferation system,” Hong said, adding thatChina would support the group in further

talks to come to a consensus at an earlydate. Opponents argue that grantingIndia membership would further under-mine efforts to prevent proliferation. Itwould also infuriate India’s rival Pakistan,which responded to India’s membershipbid with one of its own and has the back-ing of its close ally China.

Pakistan joining would be unaccept-able to many, given its track record. Thescientist that headed its nuclear weaponsprogram ran an illicit network for yearsthat sold nuclear secrets to countries

including North Korea and Iran. A deci-sion on Indian membership is not expect-ed before an NSG plenary meeting inSeoul on June 20, but diplomats havesaid Washington has been pressuringhold-outs.

Most of the hold-outs oppose theidea of admitting a non-NPT state suchas India and argue that if it is to beadmitted, it should be under criteriathat apply equally to all states ratherthan under a “tailor-made” solution for aUS ally. —Reuters

China says more talks needed to build consensus on nuke export

ALLAHABAD: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C), Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP) senior leader Lal Krishna Advani and BJP president Amit Shah (L)attend the party’s national executive meeting. —AFP

DHAKA: Bangladesh police havearrested an additional 2,000 sus-pected criminals including Islamistmilitants in an ongoing crackdownon extremists following a spate ofgruesome murders, an officer saidyesterday.

More than 3,000 people, includ-ing suspected ordinary criminalswith existing warrants againstthem, were arrested on Saturdayafter police launched a controver-sial anti-militant drive across theMuslim-majority nation. PrimeMinister Sheikh Hasina vowed onSaturday to catch “each and everykiller” as Bangladesh reels from awave of murders of rel igiousminorities and secular and liberalactivists that have spiked in recentweeks.

Among those arrested in thelatest sweep were 48 suspectedmilitants, many of them membersof banned group JamayetulMujahideen Bangladesh (JMB),police said. “ We have arrested2,132 people including 48 Islamistmilitants on the second day of thespecial drive,” Deputy InspectorGeneral of Police AKM ShahidurRahman said.

JMB is one of two local groupsblamed for most of the recentkillings. The government rejectsclaims of responsibility from theIslamic State ( IS) group and aSouth Asian branch of Al-Qaeda,saying international jihadists haveno presence in Bangladesh.

Mounting pressure The arrests come as a part-time

imam was detained in northwest-ern Pabna district over the latestkilling, that of a Hindu ashram, ormonaster y, worker hacked todeath on Friday. “He is a suspectand is being questioned over themurder,” local police chief AbuQuddus told AFP.

Bangladeshi authorities have

come under mounting interna-tional pressure to end the string ofattacks, which have left nearly 50people dead in the last threeyears. But Bangladesh oppositionparties have accused police ofusing the crackdown to suppresspolitical dissent, saying many ofthose arrested were “ordinary andinnocent people”.

The week-long crackdown ispart of ramped up efforts to haltthe killings, with five suspectedIslamists members shot dead ingun battles with police in recentdays. Hasina accuses the mainopposition Bangladesh NationalistPar ty and Is lamist par ty al ly,Jamaat-e-Islami, of orchestrating

the k i l l ings to destabil ise thecountry after they failed to topplethe government in last year ’stransport blockade.

In recent days an elderly Hindupriest was found nearly decapitat-ed in a rice field, while a Christiangrocer was hacked to death near achurch. IS claimed responsibilityfor those murders as well as thatof the 62-year- old monaster yworker. In addition to the arrests,police said they had seized nearly1,000 motorcycles.

Motorbikes have been used inmany of the attacks, with the gov-ernment recently announcing aban on motorcycl ists carr yingmore than one passenger. A

Hindu shop owner was hacked todeath outside his store in a north-ern district late last month, while aHindu tailor was killed in April.Although the country is officiallysecular, around 90 percent ofBangladesh’s 160 million-strongpopulation is Muslim, while someeight percent is Hindu.

Other victims have includedliberal activists and secular blog-gers along with two foreignersand two gay r ights ac t iv ists.Experts say a previous govern-ment crackdown on opponents,including a ban on Jamaat follow-ing a protracted political crisis,has pushed many towardsextremism. —AFP

Bangladesh makes 2k arrests

in anti-militant crackdown

PM vows to catch ‘each and every killer’

DHAKA: Bangladeshi police escort arrested men in Dhaka on June 12, 2016, who were detainedduring an anti-militant crackdown across the country. —AFP

ALLAHABAD: Prime Minister NarendraModi has notched up gains in elections toIndia’s upper house of parliament, and isseeking to drive home the advantage whenhis nationalist ruling party meets to devise astrategy to win India’s biggest state.

Modi drew standing ovations from USlawmakers this week on a visit toWashington DC but, like President BarackObama, has faced a struggle in his two yearsin power to get legislation through a hostilesecond chamber. That job may have becomeslightly less difficult after his nationalistBharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its alliesadded five seats in Saturday’s upper housepolls, but with 74 seats in the 245-chamberthey remain in a minority.

BJP leaders were due to meet later onSunday to finalize their strategy to win the2017 election in Uttar Pradesh, India’s mostpopulous state, knowing that defeat wouldhandicap Modi and sap his chances of win-

ning a second term. “We have to win UttarPradesh to change the destiny of India,” BJPnational secretary Sidharth Nath Singh saidto Reuters ahead of the two-day meeting inAllahabad, eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The opposition Congress alliance lostthree seats to 71, with regional parties hold-ing the balance of power, according tomedia tallies. With Congress down but notyet out, Modi will still have to cut deals topass tax, labour and land reforms.

Modi swept Uttar Pradesh in the 2014general election, helping him to claim thebiggest lower-house majority in threedecades. But he is unlikely to repeat thatresult against tough opposition from region-al parties. A senior BJP official said Modi’sclosed-door brainstorming session wouldmobilize grassroots activists to consolidatethe majority Hindu vote base and devise aformula to play up Hindu-Muslim polariza-tion and caste politics. —Reuters

Modi notches upper-house

gains, eyes further battles

ISLAMABAD: The son of a murderedPakistani governor who was kidnappedby Islamist insurgents has received asigned jersey from Manchester Unitedafter revealing that listening to theirmatches kept him “sane” during his fiveyears in captivity.

Shahbaz Taseer, who is in his earlythirties, was captured by gunmen inLahore in 2011 and returned to his familythis March, a rare happy ending that cap-tured the public’s imagination in a coun-try that has been battling a homegrowninsurgency for more than a decade.

Last month, he described in chillingdetail how he was flogged, shot and hadhis nails pulled out by Uzbek tormen-tors, but was able to cling on to sanityby following the progress of hisfavourite football club via a radio thatone of his guards, a fellow United fan,snuck into his cell. “For me, it was a win-dow to the outside world. Getting soc-cer news kept me sane,” Taseer wrote inPakistan’s Daily Times newspaper.

On Saturday he tweeted a picture ofhimself wearing the famous red shirt,expressing his jubilation. “OMG

@ManUtd just sent me this!!!,” he wrote.“I ’m in shock! Thank you boys! ,” headded, expressing his gratitude to thesquad members who signed the shirt.Since his release, Shahbaz and his wifeMaheen have lit up Twitter with theirfunny and loving account of their rela-tionship and of his return to civilisation.

His father Salmaan Taseer was gover-nor of Punjab province and was shotdead by his own bodyguard for hisopposition to the country’s blasphemylaws, which critics say are used to targetreligious minorities. The exact circum-stances of Shabaz ’s release remainunclear. He told CNN and the BBC thatthe Islamic Movement of Uzbekistanwanted to use him for a prisoner swap.

Later, after he came into the custodyof the Afghan Taliban, he said he wasreleased with the help of a senior mili-tant but did not explain why. Earlier thisyear, Argentine football star Lionel Messisent two jerseys to a f ive -year-oldAfghan boy who became an Internetsensation when he was pictured wear-ing a plastic bag with “Messi” scrawledon it in marker pen. —AFP

Pakistani held by Taleban

gets signed Man U jersey

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s former Maoist PrimeMinister Baburam Bhattarai announced a newpolitical party yesterday in an attempt to attractlegions of voters disillusioned with mainstreamleaders. Waving flags of the new centre-left party,thousands gathered at a stadium in Kathmanduwhere Bhattarai vowed to focus on bringing eco-nomic development to the impoverishedHimalayan nation.

Bhattarai, prime minister from August 2011 toMarch 2013, played a key role in bringing theMaoists into the political mainstream after the endof their decade-long insurgency in 2006. ButBhattarai quit the main Maoist party last Septemberover the adoption of Nepal’s controversial new con-stitution, and after years of playing second fiddle toMaoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, betterknown as Prachanda.

“Today we announce the establishment of anew political party, Naya Shakti Nepal, an alterna-tive political force... to fulfill the hope of justice,equality, freedom, identity, liberty and prosperity ofthe people,” Bhattarai told the cheering crowd.

A coalition of mainly left-wing parties includingthe main Maoist party form the current govern-ment. Bhattarai’s move came weeks after theMaoists joined hands with hardline splinter groupsto form their own new party in an attempt to bol-ster their strength. The Maoists, a minority partnerin the current government, have lost ground sincewinning a landslide victory in the Himalayannation’s first post-war elections in 2008.

Many former guerrillas have broken away fromthe main party in recent years, accusing its leaders

of betraying their revolutionary ideals. Analyst LokRaj Baral said Bhattarai’s new party could become apowerful player in an already crowded politicallandscape. “Bhattarai has a strong image and hiseconomic agendas can appeal to the people who

are highly dissatisfied with the major political par-ties,” said Baral, of the Nepal Centre forContemporary Studies. “As a Maoist leader, he alsohas strong linkages across the country to make theparty powerful.” —AFP

Nepal’s former Maoist PM

announces rival new party

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai announces the newNaya Shaktai Nepal Party under his leadership in front of supporters. —AFP

MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2016

ASTANA: Kazakhstan yesterdaysaid it had detained al l theremaining gunmen involved in aseries of shooting attacks lastweek that killed seven peopleand was blamed on radicalIslamists. Four civilians and threesoldiers were killed when a groupof gunmen went on the rampageat gun shops and attempted tostorm a military base on June 5 inthe western city of Aktobe nearthe Russian border.

In a statement, the nationalsecurity service said “all the par-ticipants” in the June 5 attacks

had been disarmed and detained.I t did not say how many hadbeen detained. Kazakh PresidentNursultan Nazarbayev called theincident a “terrorist attack” car-ried out by “followers of the non-traditional religious movementSalafism” in televised commentson Friday, referring to an ultra-conservative brand of Islam.

The oil-rich Central Asian statehas released few details aboutthe group that hijacked a bus as itattempted to storm a militarybase, but police and governmenttroops said they had killed 18

suspects as they hunted downthe perpetrators. Nazarbayev onFriday said the attackers hadreceived instructions “fromabroad” and called for tightercontrols on foreign financing ofKazakh organizations among oth-er security measures.

He did not say which foreignagents might have sponsored theattacks. Since gaining independ-ence from the Soviet Union,Kazakhstan has largely avoidedthe chaos that has dogged otherformer Soviet nations in CentralAsia. But social unrest in the

majority Muslim nation has grownas the economy reels from low oilprices and the economic crisis inneighboring Russia, a key ally.

Aktobe, a c i t y of about400,000 people, is located some100 kilometers from the Russianborder in Kazakhstan’s oil-pro-ducing west. The city was thesite of country’s first ever sui-cide bombing in 2011 that tar-geted the local headquarters ofthe Nat ional S ecur i t yCommittee (KNB), although onlythe suicide bomber was killed inthe attack. —AFP

Kazakhstan says gunmen behind attacks arrested

SRINAGAR; A Kashmiri Muslim looks on during the annual Hindu festival atthe Khirbhawani temple in Tullamulla village, some 30kms east of Srinagaron June 12, 2016. Thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, many of whom were dis-placed more than two decades ago, attended the festival in order to worshipthe Hindu goddess Mata Khirbhawani on the day of her birth. Some 200,000Kashmiri Pandits fled the region in the early nineties at the start of an insur-gency against Indian rule, mainly to the Hindu-dominated southern city ofJammu and they return yearly for the festival. —AFP