India discusses Iran Issue with with US President
The Minister of State for External Affairs, Shri Rao Inderjit Singh told the Rajya Sabha today that Iran’s nuclear issue came up for discussion with the US President during Prime Minister’s recent visit to New York in September 2005. Prime Minister and US President exchanged views on the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme and the consultations in progress at the IAEA in Vienna at that time. The Prime Minister conveyed the importance of engaging in intensive diplomatic efforts to evolve an international consensus on this issue.The Minister further said that India’s stand remains unchanged on this issue. India continues to believe that a way could be found to reconcile Iran’s need for nuclear energy for its development with the international community’s concern over proliferation. India supports keeping the door open for dialogue and consensus and avoidance of confrontation. India is opposed to the matter being referred to the UN Security Council, and believes that International community needs to keep Iran engaged in a dialogue to resolve the issue. India welcomes the cooperation that Iran has been extending to the IAEA to enable it to fulfill its mandate. This information was given by the Minister in reply to a question by Shri Rajkumar Dhoot
The Minister told the Rajya Sabha that the US administration has not stipulated that India sign a more restrictive safeguard agreement with IAEA than other nuclear weapon States including US have done. Reaffirming that India has not made any alteration to its stated stand, the Minister said that during the meeting of the Working Group on Nuclear issue on 21 October 2005, it was made clear to the US side that the only framework was the July 18, 2005 understanding that Congressional concerns could not lead to any change of goal posts; that India’s benefits and advantages would be the same as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technologies such as the United States; and that we will place voluntarily our civilian nuclear facilities under safeguards and would negotiate an Additional Protocol. This information was given by the Minister in reply to a question by Shri K. Chandran Pillai.
Malaysian Company's Global Market Penetration
Dubai, UAE, December 8, 2005 – Malaysia's joining the A400M programme is a further boost to the global industrial development of EADS as well as to Malaysia’s industrial sector. On Thursday, the Malaysian government signed a contract at the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition LIMA ’05 for the purchase of four A400M military transport aircraft. In April 2005, South Africa also joined the European transport aircraft programme. In the framework of this contract, Malaysian industry will receive high-technology work packages worth initially 1 billion Ringgits, (about 200 million Euros) for the design and manufacture of A400M airframe components to be delivered worldwide.
EADS CEOs Tom Enders and Noël Forgeard stated: “Just over two years before the A400M's maiden flight, it is a great achievement for us to have Malaysia on board. The Malaysian contract demonstrates that the A400M meets the needs of air forces around the world. On the global market, there is no other military transport aircraft as competitive as the A400M."“Our major achievements in Asia Pacific in the civil and military aviation business are direct results of our partnership and investment strategy in the region during the last 10 years,” said Jean-Paul Gut, EADS COO for Marketing, Strategy and International. Christian Duhain, Head of EADS International, the marketing organisation of EADS, added: “Asia Pacific is one of the key growth regions for EADS. In the next five years we‘ll see the Asia Pacific share of our turnover reaching 20 percent and by 2015 we expect 30 percent portion of our sales to come from Asia Pacific.”
Through its divisions and joint ventures, EADS has already developed long standing smart partnerships with the Malaysian industry. Airbus, for example, has established a continuous and successful cooperation with Composites Technology Research Malaysia (CTRM) in the field of composite materials, starting with the manufacturing of fixed trailing edge for the A300 passenger jet followed by A320 leading and trailing edge lower panels. Meanwhile CTRM is designing and building the new A380 fixed leading edge lower panels.
Eurocopter, the world’s leading helicopter manufacturer, opened a regional industrial and maintenance centre in Malaysia in 2004, Eurocopter Malaysia. This Centre has established fruitful industrial partnerships with more than 15 Malaysian companies and small and medium enterprises and has launched an ambitious training programme with the Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology aiming to train 100 students over the next four years. Eurocopter is a 100 percent subsidiary of EADS.
EADS also has developed cooperation in the field of Satellite Ground Receiving Stations with Technology Park Malaysia (TPM) and in the field of secure networks and defence products. “In line with the policy of the Malaysian government, EADS is fully committed to a long-term partnership with the Malaysian industry, bringing work, know-how and technology to Malaysia. We are committed to contributing to the building of a solid Malaysian Aerospace Industry”, Duhain emphasized. EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2004, EADS generated revenues of € 31.8 billion and employed a workforce of about 110,600. The EADS Group includes the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, the world's largest helicopter supplier Eurocopter and the joint venture MBDA, the leading international missile producer. EADS is the major partner in the Eurofighter consortium, is the prime contractor for the Ariane launcher, develops the A400M military transport aircraft and is the largest industrial partner for the European satellite navigation system Galileo.
Fears over increasing child trafficiking to Saudi Arabia
SANA, 8 December (IRIN) - "I was astonished when I saw a four-year old girl picked up by the police at the Saudi border," said Haitham al-Jubairi, director of social affairs and labour in the Hajja governorate, 120 km north of the capital, Sana.He recounted how the girl's two "travelling companions" were arrested before his eyes after they were found to be trafficking children. They had made a deal with the girl's stepfather to take her to Saudi Arabia, where she could be used to beg for money. There are no reliable figures available on the numbers of children trafficked out of Yemen each year, but there are countless reports of children crossing into oil-rich Saudi Arabia - with or without the consent of their parents - to find opportunities to make money.
"The exact figure is difficult to ascertain because it's a clandestine business and the children don't go through official border checkpoints," said Naseem Ur-Rehman, communications coordinator with UNICEF in Sana.The lack of reliable data is compounded by the fact that Yemen does not have reliable systems for birth registration and the issuance of identity cards for children.Remarkably, about 82 percent of child trafficking occurs with the consent of the child's parents, according to UNICEF. In almost 60 percent of cases, however, it is against the will of the child involved.
In early 2004, Saudi authorities handed over 9,815 children to Yemeni authorities. Many of them had been found begging or were lost.According to Ur-Rehman, the phenomenon must be confronted before it gets worse. "If we don't do anything about the problem today, it will become very serious," she said. She added that the children who managed to return to Yemen "often set examples for other children, who then also begin thinking about going and working outside".
Most aid workers concede that crushing poverty is the overriding reason for the hazardous practice."Child trafficking is one of the consequences of people suffering from poverty," said Minister of Human Rights Amat al-Aleem al-Soswa at a recent conference addressing the issue. "If families were better off, parents wouldn't let their children go to places where they will be vulnerable to abuse and exploitation"."If we want a radical solution to this problem," she added, "we should fight poverty".
According to the latest World Bank report, 42 percent of Yemen's 19.7 million people live on less than US $2 per day, while unemployment rates for 2003 stood at 37 percent. The UN World Food Programme further notes that almost 8 percent of the Yemeni population experiences severe food insecurity.Trafficking of children is made tempting by the fact that three of the poorest governorates in the west of Yemen - Hajja, Hodiedah and Mahweet - lie close to the Saudi border.These areas generally suffer from high unemployment, poor living conditions, the inexistence of infrastructure and a lack of public services such as healthcare, water and electricity.
Dangers of the trade
Over a quarter of the children who have been deported back to Yemen by Saudi authorities say they faced hunger and physical violence while abroad. Some 65 percent of them ended up living on the streets or sleeping in mosques or abandoned buildings during the course of their travels, according to UNICEF. Some found jobs cleaning cars or washing dishes, while a large number was forced to beg. Those who do find jobs are often unpaid, or forced to hand over their meager pay to their traffickers.Children's biggest worry is being caught by Saudi border guards who often put them in jails with adult prisoners where they can face further abuse.
In an effort to alleviate the problem, the Yemeni government, in cooperation with UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation, set up a reception centre this year at the Haradh border area, 400 km to the west of Sana, to receive the returnees.Since its launch in May, the centre has received 320 children, according to al-Jubairi.Before the establishment of the centre, trafficked children had nowhere to go after being deported, and generally ended up in orphanages or on the street, according to UNICEF. "Now they are received, rehabilitated and given some education," said Ur-Rehman.Parents are also contacted by the social affairs and labour ministry and asked to collect their child - but only after signing an agreement pledging not to risk their lives again.
Legal action
Occasionally, if parents are found to have been particularly negligent, they are prosecuted, according to the ministry.Traffickers, if found, are always arrested and prosecuted, officials say.The court of Hajja, for example, recently sentenced the parents of 13 children to a year in jail, while traffickers receive sentences of between three and five years in prison each.Social workers note that stiffer penalties serve to deter the practice noticeably. "It has tremendously reduced trafficking to Saudi Arabia," said al-Jubairi. "The number of children we're receiving at the centre is going down by 80 per cent."
In the meantime, a local state-run radio is broadcasting programmes for families aimed at raising awareness of the issue.Following recent debates on the subject, the Yemeni cabinet also announced its intention to present legislation to parliament aimed at criminalising the trafficking of children and determining suitable penalties for those responsible, said al-Jubairi.But aid workers say not enough is being done to combat the illegal trade, which violates international law on child trafficking as well as illegal immigration. Despite Yemen's ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1991, national law does not contain specific provisions on the sale of children, child prostitution and child trafficking, according to UNICEF.Aid workers note that the criminalisation of such practices is a key first step in combating them.
Indo US Universities Edusat Launched
The President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, inaugurated the Indo-US Universities EDUSAT Network through video-conferencing from Rashtrapati Bhavan, today. Speaking on the occasion to a combined gathering of the members from the Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Science and Technology, Amrita Vishva Vidyapeetham, five universities of USA, Microsoft Corporation, QUALCOMM Inc. and Cadence Design Systems Inc., the President said, this occasion was an important day in the annals of Indo-US academic cooperation. Indian and American Universities have decided to work together using EDUSAT connectivity and create a new wave of synergy amongst our educational institutions.It is indeed a renewal programme of long standing scientific cooperation between our two countries. It has to be a win-win situation for both our nations. This cooperation indeed should result in the virtual university system. The whole purpose of education in a country like India is to develop and enhance the potential of our human resource and progressively transform it into a knowledge society. The real capital of this knowledge society will be its knowledge workers. Our education system should re-align itself at the earliest to meet the needs of the present day challenges and be fully geared to participate in the societal transformation. The networking of universities and institutions through EDUSAT is the first step towards creating the universities that could meet the demands of the knowledge era – an era that was born out of convergence of technologies. The knowledge connectivity is essential for networking and providing a seamless access between the knowledge creator that is the Universities and institutions, the R & D institutions that convert knowledge into products and the knowledge consumer that is the industry and people.
Dr. Kalam also highlighted some possible R&D Areas for the Universities to work on towards national Development. These are:- the Energy Sector, the Second Green Revolution, Infrastructure Development, ICT, Nano Science and Technology, Computer Aided Design and Engineering, Virtual Reality, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Earth Quake Forecasting.
Concluding his address the President said that for realizing excellence in education, what is need is quality faculty, infrastructural facility, national and international high bandwidth connectivity, and availability of knowledge sources. In addition a good learning environment, collaborative environment, exposure to the international best practices and constant promotion of innovation and creativity is also needed. The higher the research intensity in a University environment better will be the teaching quality, he emphasised. The Indo-US University collaboration he hoped would provide these features to all the constituents’ colleges in different regions.
ENVOYS PRESENT CREDENTIALS TO PRESIDENT
Eleven envoys presented their credentials to the President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan here today. The envoys who presented their credentials were: His Excellency Mr. Chrysantha Romesh Jayasinghe, the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka, His Excellency Mr. John Economides, the Ambassador of Greece, His Excellency Mr. Andreas Zenonos, the High Commissioner of Cyprus, His Excellency Mr. Mohamed Ali Daher Nsour, the Ambassador of Jordan, His Excellency Mr. Asko Numminen, the Ambassador of Finland, His Excellency Mr. Jairam Ronald Gajraj, the High Commissioner of Guyana, His Excellency, Mr. Mohammed Bin Yousuf Shalwani, the Ambassador of Oman, His Excellency, Mr. Marten N. Kapewasha, the High Commissioner of Namibia, His Excellency, Mr. Hassan Mohammed Rafea Abdulrahman Al-Emadi, the Ambassador of Qatar, His Excellency, Mr. Francis S.K. Bayah, the High Commissioner of Kenya and His Excellency, Mr. Ly Bounkham, the Ambassador of Laos.After the presentation of credentials, the President had an interaction with the Heads of Missions in which he inquired about each nations core-competencies. In addition Dr. Kalam urged that bilateral trade between India and these nations should increase from its present levels, which would be a win-win proposition. The credential presentation ceremony was attended by the senior members of the missions, senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs and Rashtrapati Bhavan.
