World Music: Czech Folk Dance in Karlovy Vary.

Sri Lanka to request IMF waiver on deficit.

COLOMBO, March 15 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka will seek a waiver from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after failing to meet its 2009 budget deficit target as agreed for a $2.6 billion loan, the central bank said on Monday.

Authorities hope a waiver would allow frozen payments from the loan to resume, K.D. Ranasinghe, the chief economist at the central bank, told Reuters in an interview.

The IMF said late last month that it was delaying the third tranche of the loan after the government missed its 2009 deficit targets. The third tranche is worth around $318 million of the remaining loan of around $2 billion.

"When they (the IMF's mission to Sri Lanka) go to their board, we will request a waiver. The deviations are for good reasons," he said, referring to higher-than-expected government spending on post-war reconstruction and infrastructure projects.

Sri Lanka also hoped to renegotiate the IMF target for its 2010 budget deficit, Ranasinghe added.

Sri Lanka's 2009 deficit hit an eight-year high of 9.7 percent of the gross domestic product, much higher than a target of 7 percent agreed with the IMF, and authorities have said it would also miss its goal for 2010.

The IMF loan has helped to stabilise the rupee currency LKR= and boost global investor confidence in the South Asian country.

Delays in disbursements could undermine foreign investment in the country as it looks to recover from a 25-year civil war. They could also raise Sri Lanka's borrowing costs for a 10-year, $500 million sovereign bond sovereign bond it expects to sell later this year.

The IMF approved the loan last July to help Colombo avert a balance of payments crisis, but it said on Feb. 25 that it was delaying the third tranche of the financing until it sees the new budget, which is expected after April 8 parliamentary elections.

Since the announcement of the delay, foreign investors have sold a net 2.2 billion rupees ($19.3 million) worth of shares on the local stock exchange.

According to the terms of the loan, Sri Lanka has to reduce its budget deficit to an ambitious target of 6 percent by end of this year to ensure the next six tranches of the loan are disbursed without delays.

However, the island nation's finance ministry has already estimated the deficit at 7.5 percent.

"During the next IMF visit after the elections, the government will discuss the numbers," Ranasinghe said.

The 6 percent target would exclude the cost of reconstruction in the war-torn north and east, he added. (Editing by Kim Coghill)

By Courtesy of www.in.reuters.com
15th March, 2010.

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Sri Lanka should come out from this dependency on IMF. Dependency and boasting about the loans are not a good thing for a country. Now the ‘Terrorist Insurgency’ is over. Sri Lanka should win the economic war front too. President Mahinda Rajapaksa can do it if he has the will and form a good team after the ‘General Elections’. If President gets corrupt and incompetent people around him then his image will be tarnished and he will be another ‘Chandrika’. But during the last five years President Rajapaksa has shown that he is a ‘Patriotic’ and intelligent president. We will see how he is selecting his team after the general elections.

By Chinthaka.

Sri Lanka slams U.S. rights report.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka dismissed a U.S. State Department report on Monday accusing it of violating citizens' rights, saying the allegations were unsubstantiated and based on reports by unnamed sources.

The State Department's annual human rights survey faulted both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger separatists in the island's 25-year-civil war which ended last year.

It said government forces and the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam used excessive force and committed abuses against civilians.

"The document is a conflation of historical background, repetition of statements in earlier reports, unverified assertions of facts and broad generalizations," said a statement by the Sri Lanka's Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights.

The ministry said the allegations were based on "reports that are mainly attributed to anonymous NGO's, international sources, human rights groups, observers and other unnamed sources."

Rights groups and Western governments are pressing for some kind of accountability for thousands of civilian deaths in the last months of the war against the LTTE, which aimed to create a separate homeland for the island's Tamil minority.

The government has denied charges of deliberately targeting civilians and other human rights breaches.

By Ranga Sirilal
By Courtesy of www.in.reuters.com
15th March, 2010.

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It is simply the US hypocrisy. Should we pay any attention to those reports? US has been issuing those so called ‘human rights, democracy reports about ‘Cuba’ and other socialist countries about 50 years now. No body cares about those reports. US is not the sole super power anymore. Rising giants Bear (Russia), Dragon (China), Tiger (India) are fast becoming truly global super powers with their staggering economies. With weak economies US and Britain have become powers of the past. Everybody knows about their own track record about the human right violations and war crimes.

By Chinthaka.

Putin signs pact for 12 nuclear plants in India.

In a major boost to India-Russian relations, 19 agreements were signed on Friday, including three in civil nuclear field and one for purchase of 29 MiG-29 fighters besides inking the revised agreement on Gorshkov aircraft carrier, a deal that was stuck for three years over price.

Under the agreements in civil nuclear field, Russia will build 12 atomic plants - six in Kudankulam and six in Haripur in West Bengal.

The agreements were signed during the day-long visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who held comprehensive talks with his counterpart Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the aim of exploring opportunities for further boosting the relations. They also discussed regional issues, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the context of terrorism and agreed to intensify their consultations on Afghanistan the challenges posed by terrorism and extremism in the region.

The pacts in civil nuclear field are agreement on cooperation in the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and agreement on road map for the serial construction of Russian designed nuclear power plants. An MoU was also signed on Nuclear Power between NPCIL and Atomstroy Export for construction of third and fourth atomic plant in Kudankulum in Tamil Nadu.

The revised agreement on Gorshkov aircraft carrier deal was also signed during the visit. The deal had initially been signed in 2004 at the cost of $1.5 billion, along with 16 MiG-29Ks.

By Courtesy of www.nation.lk
14th March, 2010.

New criterion for next Cabinet.

When selecting the next Cabinet, President Mahinda Rajapaksa will be giving top consideration to efficiency, past track record and honesty, while the number of Cabinet ministers will be restricted to between 35 and 40, a highly placed source said.

He added that the rationale behind this thinking is the need for fast tracking the economic development of the country, which is high in the agenda in the President’s second term.

Political experience and seniority of the members, though not the sole consideration, will also be taken into consideration when selecting the Cabinet.

He said that in the high level discussions, which the President has had in this regard, a question that has arisen is the practicality in achieving a high level of efficiency and best results when too many subjects are assigned to one Cabinet minister.

Current system of having non-Cabinet ministers will be scrapped. However, he pointed out that efficiency targets could be achieved by appointing a deputy minister for each subject thereby ensuring more active participation of the deputy ministers in the development activities.

Meanwhile, political observers pointed out that the promise to restrict the cabinet to 35 members could easily be implemented in the event the government gets a two third majority in Parliament with no necessity to accommodate those who crossover in the Cabinet.

However, they said that contrary to the recent experiences in Sri Lanka, the next Cabinet is likely to be more of a task oriented entity than a talking shop.

Currently, Sri Lanka has 51 Cabinet ministers and 39 non-Cabinet ministers, which is generally believed to be too excessive by any standards as most other countries, including those which are larger in size and with bigger population, manage with smaller Cabinets.

By Courtesy of www.nation.lk
14th March, 2010.

Weerawansa warns of foreign agencies supporting LTTE terrorism.

The latest British show of support for Tamils who aids terrorism and the LTTE has been condemned by Leader of the National Freedom Front, Wimal Weerawansa.

In a statement issued yesterday, Weerawansa says that the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Conservative Party have been trying to win over the hearts of pro-LTTE Tamils in order to gain an advantage in the upcoming British Parliamentary elections.

The statement mentions that the world knows how despicably British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary, David Miliband had acted at the recent World Tamil Forum.

Weerawansa further stated that opposition MP William Hague had gone even further and said that his party supports self governance in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The statement goes on to accuse Hague of being a politician who supported Kosovo terrorists to create a separate state by breaking up sovereign Serbia. Therefore, Weerawansa has cautioned that people need to be cautious when Hague claims that he wants to see justice served for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Weerawansa urges Sri Lakans to be cautious of these foreign powers and their agents in Sri Lanka. (TP)

By Courtesy of www.nation.lk
14th March, 2010.

Nigeria killings caught on video.

What kind of action has taken by UN about theses kind of atrocities? Because Nigerian Government is a Corrupt Western Puppet Regime and those rebels are ‘Islamists’ they turn blind eye to those crimes.