Ben’s Blog

While North Korea, bronze medal winner in the axis of evil, is no longer a “state sponsor of terrorism“, the poor old Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist),  single largest party in Nepal’s democratically-elected government, is still a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization, according to the US State department.

Nonetheless, Maoist party chairman, and Nepali PM, Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda – the fierce one), was still allowed to enter the US recently to address the UN General Assembly in New York.  He kept a lid on the fiery rhetoric, and allusions to Marx, Lenin and Mao were absent as he focused on some of Nepal’s challenges: accelerating socio-economic development, ensuring human rights and building peace and reconciliation, and responding to climate change.

In fact, his call for greater Millennium Development Goal progress, for donors to live up to their commitments, for a genuine development round focused on the needs of the poor in the World Trade Organisation, and for support to meet the human development challenges of climate change, could almost have been delivered by Gordon Brown, or Make Poverty History… Communists!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 1:35 am and is filed under Aid, Development, Environment, Nepal, Politics, Trade. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.