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Thursday, May 14, 1998

	Strange way to make friends George Fernandes first tells the world that China is the no. 1 threat to India. There is the expected rap on the knuckles by China. Within 24 hours, he says he is committed to dialogue with China. He said his remarks were meant to focus attention on critical aspects of Sino-Indian relations and forging amity between India and China, and India and Pakistan.		The new Pak game in the Valley The Hurriyat Conference has replaced the relatively moderate Mirwaiz Omar Farooq with hardline and pro-Pakistan leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani as its president. The Pakistanis who are obviously behind this move must know that this would further erode whatever little credibility the Hurriyat may have been left with.
	In for a penny The two further nuclear tests at Pokharan on Wednesday give a clear enough indication that the government's mind is working in the right direction. The signal is heartening and the tests are to be welcomed. It seems almost certain that the government wants to go ahead and sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- when it is good and ready.		Homing in The Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act 1976 is a piece of legislation whose time has gone. The anachronistic Act has increasingly been found to be unresponsive to the country's needs for urban housing besides having helped to introduce a pernicious virus of corruption into the system. In fact, the United Front government had last November taken a decision to repeal the Act.

The highway war
Operation Jaya Sekuru, Sri Lanka's most ambitious military campaign launched to secure a highway between the north and south of the island through the territory controlled by the separatist Tamil Tigers completes a year on May 13. With more than 3,000 combatants dead on both sides and thousands injured, the war does not seem to end.

When it was still cricket
Watching the India-Australia final of the Pepsi Triangular Series at Delhi's Ferozshah Kotla ground the other day stirred many a childhood memory, I first visited Ferozshah Kotla as a nine-year-old in 1948 to watch a India-West Indies Test match. Lala Amarnath, the Indian captain, was naturally the local hero.