Nepal / Burma ASA -ABSL

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Dear Burma Readers,

Two earlier postings re "The International Women's Day"and "ASA says NO 
to Visit Myanmar Year 1996" filed by the ASA ASBL branch in India, 
referred to Free Burma lobbying in the Himalayan country Nepal, and 
described solidarity with the student activists there in the context of 
the 13th General Conference of the All Nepal National Free Students Union 
(ANNFSU). While I am not familiar wilth the ANNFSU, I request more 
objectivity in the reporting from Nepal. The Communist Party of Nepal, 
while the leader of the opposition, during the last six to seven years of 
democracy there, except for a short, six month government last fall 
overthrown by the current coalition government headed by the Nepali 
Congress Party, has never been the "main Nepalese political party", as 
so described in the posting.

In fact, the Nepali Congress, historically the leading opposition party 
during the last fifty years of struggle for democracy and human rights in 
nepal, against the King's panchayat one party system of government, 
continues to be the leading, central political in Nepal, offering both 
stability and traditional leadership. Many of its leaders, Ganesh Man 
Singh, GP Koriala,(Prime Minister during three and a half years, 
and brother to the late great BP Koriala, the country's first Prime 
Minister in 1959, and for thirty years leader of the Congress Party,  and 
KP Bhatterai, are still on the front line, and while they do represent 
the Old Guard of the Nepali Congress Party, once closely linked with 
Nehru in India, there are many younger leaders to continue the Congress 
struggle for democracy and stability for development in Nepal.

The Communist Party , one of the last vistages of marxist-leninist 
opposition, is dictated to by the Chinese in a very unique case of power 
relations in the region between China and India. It is regrettable that 
even the Congress Party followed the tactics of the Chinese in denouncing 
Tibet and imprisoning Tibetan protestors, in anticipation of the recent 
Prime Minister's delegation from Kathmandu to China -one of the few 
countries to do so. But such is the influence of China in tiny poor 
Nepal, a country of strong able people, locked between two superpowers, 
and emerging as a free and representative democracy.