(Statement delivered at the 12th meeting of the standing committee at the Kathmandu, Nepal, February 27, 2010.)

MR. Chairman, Friends and colleagues

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Let us, first of all, thank our hosts – Prime Minister Madhau Kumar Nepal the Government and the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) for this gracious welcome to mystical Kathmandu.

Over this past half-century, Nepal’s political history has been that of its epic passage from a feudal monarchy to a full-fledged democratic republic.

And that history has been written by the Nepalis themselves.

It was a great people’s movement that brought down Kathmandu’s last autocrat – and forced even Nepal’s revolutionary parties to submit to open, electoral politics.

We are gathered here and call on all political parties in Nepal to expedite the ongoing peace process in the spirit of cooperation, consensus, and compromise, to complete the undertaking between the Nepalese Government and the Unified Communist Party (Maoist) on the integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist army personnel by May 15, 2010. It is our hope in ICAPP’s Standing Committee and indeed we recommend a visit to Nepal by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at the earliest possible date to meet leaders of all the political parties in Nepal to help them successfully conclude the peace process and insure success of the Government of National Unity for the peace and prosperity of the Nepalese people.

Even now a Constituent Assembly is writing a new Charter that we all hope will ensure the political stability and economic development of Nepal – as well as preserve its unique cultural heritage, in this magnificent Himalayan setting.

Unifying the political parties of the developing world

Friends and colleagues – As we look back to ICAPP’s first decade, I’m sure we’re all extremely pleased by our Conference’s progress in helping to unify the political parties of the developing world.

Here in our home continent, we’re steadily increasing ICAPP’s membership. Most recently, ICAPP – born in Manila in September 2000 – incorporated key political parties in Central Asia – the most prominent being Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan Party, which hosted our Fifth General Assembly in its capital city of Astana, represented here by its Deputy Chairman Nurlan Nigmatullin and Muktar Yerman, member of the Political Council.

Linking up with the Asian parliamentary assembly

To commemorate ICAPP’s tenth year, our 6th General Assembly – to be held in Karachi this November – will reach out to all of the 263 parties in 51 Asian countries eligible for membership in ICAPP.

We’re also following up linkages with the Asian Parliamentary Assembly which we have suggested from its beginning. The APA Secretary General – the distinguished M.H. Nejad Hosseinian of Iran – observed the 11th Standing Committee Meeting in Astana last September. He is here with us today.

It is our hope that the First Session between the ICAPP Standing Committee and the APA’s Executive Council will take place in Moscow this November – under the auspices of the ruling United Russia Party, represented here by our colleague Konstantin Kosachev, indeed a meeting long awaited by both sides. The meeting could also be in Karachi or Pnom Penh. We await consultations with our distinguished colleague, former presidential candidate Sen. Mushahid Hussain Sayed and our friends from Cambodia.

Unifying the parties of Asia, Latin America, Africa As you know, ICAPP has also been extending its fraternal networks beyond Asia – last year to Latin America and the Caribbean; and this year, hopefully, to Africa.

Our Secretariat has briefed our membership on our Standing Committee’s historic meeting – last July – with the Secretariat of COPPPAL – the “Permanent Conference of the Political Parties in Latin America and the Caribbean” – in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

That first meeting was held on the initiative of Argentina and Mexico, under the leadership of COPPPAL’s Co-Chairmen, Gustavo Carvajal, who is here with us today; and Antonio Cafiero of Argentina, both elder statesmen of Latin America.

That we should invite the African parties to join us in a trilateral fraternity is both fitting and proper – since Latin American, African, and Asian powers have all become stakeholders in the international system – in the context of a world whose center of gravity is tilting from the Old World to the New.

Africa to host first trilateral talks

Our first African initiatives drew immediate enthusiasm.

Just before the Christmas holidays we visited Tripoli (Libya) on the invitation of H.E., Col. Muammar Qadaffi, the Libyan leader and then Chairman of the African Union; and of H.E., Suleiman al Shahoumi, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the General People’s Congress.

There we began explorations that should enable the political parties of Africa, Asia, and Latin America to convene regularly for fraternal consultations and exchanges of political and administrative
experience.

The Libyan Government has offered to host sometime this year the first Trilateral Session of the Standing Committees, Governing Boards and Secretariats of ICAPP, COPPPAL, and the assembled parties of the African Union.

Our Co-Chairman and Secretary General Chung Eui Yong and I are in touch as well with political parties of South Africa to co-lead in this African initiative.

Meanwhile, we shall be holding in one of our member-countries – in early 2011 – the Second Joint Session with COPPPAL, to follow up on the inaugural meeting in Buenos Aires in 2009.

The Practical benefits from consultation Apart from the intangible benefits of fraternity, consultation between our countries will serve an eminent practical purpose. At the very least, it will prevent them from having to re-invent the wheel.

For we in Asia, Latin America, and Africa face similar problems: of building state capacity – choosing economic models – and promoting democratization.

We need each other’s support in the unceasing battle against corruption and misgovernment – in abolishing poverty – and, increasingly, in the struggle to ease global warming and climate change.

We need to learn from each other’s experiences. And, in fact, quite a bit of borrowing and adapting of administrative and welfare programs is already taking place.

For instance, the “conditional cash transfers” program to keep the children of the very poor in school – invented in Mexico and already widely spread in Latin America – has been adopted in various degrees by Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines and Cambodia – which is represented here by its distinguished Deputy Premier Sok An of the Cambodian People’s Party and H.E. Keo Puth Reasmey, chairman of the Funcipec Party.

This CCT Program should be eminently transferable – particularly to the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Learning from China’s anti-poverty record Consultations between our parties will multiply – and speed up – adaptation and borrowing of successful programs – to everybody’s benefit.

This is the object of ICAPP’s Anti-Poverty Conference in Beijing – in June or July – for which our member-parties should now be making national preparation.

Our most able outgoing Chinese colleague, H.E., Liu Hongcai, now China’s Ambassador to North Korea; and his distinguished successor, H.E., Liu Jieyi, Vice-Minister of the Communist Party of China, are making preparations for this Workshop in Kunming and Beijing.

From China’s growth record, all our countries have much to learn. In early 2007 – according to the American Institute for International Economics (Washington) – China’s economy was 10 times larger than it was in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping took over in Beijing and began China’s economic miracle.

Not only has China pulled 400 million of its people out of grinding poverty. China is also on the verge of becoming the world’s second-largest economy.

Our colleagues from the political parties of Japan and India are taking a more active role in ICAPP. The Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and the ruling Democratic Party, represented here by the Congressman Yukihisa Fujita its director-general, are pushing the emergence of an East Asian Community. India, under the Congress Party has become a major economic power, and Vietnam, represented here by Dr. Pham Xuan Son, vice chairman of the Central Commission for External Relations of the Communist Party of Vietnam, has achieved gains in many areas.

ICAPP has developed well beyond our initial hopes Let me conclude with a modest proposal.

ICAPP’s founding principle is its rejection of intimidation or violence as a means of settling disputes.

We urge instead the negotiated political settlement of all conflicts within and between the states we represent.

ICAPP has so developed that I now feel we could begin to apply – to put to work – this principle that has brought us together. We should begin to harness the fraternity we’ve grown to help along the process of reconciliation in Asia’s conflict zones.

As we know all too well, these conflict zones extend from the Korea Peninsula to the Taiwan Straits – from Mindanao through Southern Thailand to Nepal – from Kashmir and Afghanistan, Pakistan to Iraq and Palestine – and from Chechnya to the Caucasus Mountains.

I propose that our relevant parties pair off to talk about easing tensions in these conflict zones – on the model of the talks between the Chinese and Taiwanese political parties that have brought the Taiwan Straits its most stable period in 60 years.

Political parties are eminently suited for back-channel explorations -- since they’re both “unofficial” and “authoritative.”

Political parties are unofficial since they don’t necessarily represent elected governments; but they’re authoritative because they have official connections. Ultimately, their views and preferences influence -- or even shape – policy decisions.

I see great scope for conversations between the South Korean and North Korean parties on a role for North Korea in an East Asian Economic Grouping of the ASEAN-10, plus China, Japan and South Korea.

I also feel the Indian and Pakistan ruling and opposition parties can talk authoritatively about easing the Kashmir dispute between their countries; the Malaysian and Thai parties about the situation in Southern Thailand.

All of these parties are ICAPP members and have easy access to each other at our regular gatherings. In fact, the ICAPP institution can act as an honest broker at these conversations, which can then be brought to professional diplomats as soon as they show prospects of success.

Mobilizing global parties on behalf of global peace One of our end-goals is to mobilize all the world’s political groupings on behalf of the global peace process; the political and economic integration of the regions; the stability of the economic order; and common action against poverty, corruption and climate change.

By getting together and agreeing on common action, we, the world’s political parties, could contribute our share to bridging the East-West, North-South divide; prevent the threatening “clash of civilizations,” and save our planet from environmental degradation.

These, I know, may seem like grandiose goals. But given how far ICAPP has gone in less than ten years, how much comradeship and mutual trust it has built up between us – as ICAPP officers, as individuals and as representatives of our political systems – I am hopeful we can get some good things done.