Mongolia keeps the dialogue going on North Korea www.upi.com

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Mongolia has been quietly playing a mediating role in North Korea talks, hosting representatives from Pyongyang when they seek informal discussions with counterparts from Japan and South Korea.

The Mongolian foray into hosting North Korea-related bilateral talks has made progress since the launch of informal Track 2 dialogues in 2015, Ambassador Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan said Thursday at a closed-door roundtable hosted by the Global Peace Foundation in Washington.

Enkhsaikhan, now retired, is the chairman of Mongolian NGO Blue Banner. The group, together with the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, a regional network, has been organizing the talks known as the Ulaanbaatar Process to help grease the wheels of dialogue even during times of tension on the Korean Peninsula.

Mongolia may be in a unique position to host North Korea-related meetings at a time when the long abandoned six-party talks on denuclearization, last held in China in 2009, have become a distant memory. Under Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang has instead favored one-on-one, high-stakes summits with world leaders.

Enkhsaikhan, who said his views are his own, didn't rule out a future U.S.-North Korea summit in Ulaanbaatar. He also told UPI that Washington and Pyongyang will need to lay the groundwork ahead of the summit. Talks collapsed in Hanoi, Vietnam in February because not much was discussed at the expert or ministerial level; all the nuances came from the top.

"Now they're talking about working-group meetings," Enkhsaikhan said. "That's very good. Hopefully they will meet soon."

Mongolian cooperation on sensitive issues has helped countries like Japan to build low-level dialogue on the issue of abducted Japanese citizens. At the meeting on Wednesday, a Japanese academic from a university in Kyoto said Mongolia's mediating role for countries that "lack trust" has enabled Japan to provide financial support to Mongolia so that it could use the funds to invite North Koreans.

The issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons has dogged past U.S. presidents. Mongolia is a traditional partner for North Korea, and their relationship dates back to the Cold War, when the two countries were part of the Soviet bloc.

"We have not changed our attitude toward North Korea," the former diplomat said. "We don't forget friends."

Friendship does not mean Mongolia is not concerned about North Korea's weapons of mass destruction --- a program that has been on Ulaanbaatar's radar since the '90s.

"First it was a 'nuclear program,' now they say it is a 'nuclear weapons program'," Enkhsaikhan said.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mongolia and North Korea took divergent paths. Pyongyang maintained isolation and may have secretly started a uranium program in the '90s, while Mongolia pursued democratization and declared itself a nuclear weapon-free zone.

Mongolia's decision to reject weapons was rooted in a historical lesson, according to Enkhsaikhan.

The landlocked Asian republic may have faced an existential threat when rivals China and the Soviet Union were on the brink of a potential nuclear war in 1969. Moscow at the time stored dual-use weapons, including midrange missiles and planes in Mongolia, which could have made Soviet bases in Mongolia a target of Chinese fire.

"A duck is calm when the lake is calm," he said, referring to a Mongolian saying that summarizes how national interests are best served by a stable regional security environment. "That is why Mongolia tries to stay as active as possible."

Enkhsaikhan said he supports a U.S. security assurance for North Korea that comes with a "double assurance" from Russia and China, a guarantee that could help build trust with Pyongyang.

"And no matter how detailed the agreements, they should be ratified by government, meaning parliament," he said.

Mongolia's willingness to host North Korean officials has also served as a barometer for the mood in Pyongyang.

During the closed-door meeting on Wednesday, a former U.S. State Department officer and Mongolian specialist said after talks collapsed in February between President Donald Trump and Kim, North Korea stopped showing up at the dialogues in Ulaanbaatar.

Enkhsaikhan said Mongolia, with its steady ties to both Koreas, supports Korean unification, and that his country is ready to share its experience of democratization with Pyongyang.

"If they are interested, we will tell them" about democratic systems, he said.

The Global Peace Foundation is affiliated with the ultimate holding company that owns United Press International.

Chinese key rail projects to boost regional socioeconomic development www.chinadaily.com.cn

China is accelerating the planning of a number of key railway projects, as the government looks to boost connectivity and fuel its prodigious economic growth, according to the country's top economic regulator.

Meng Wei, spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission, said strengthening railway infrastructure construction will play a key role in improving public transport, boosting regional economic and social development, and fostering a robust market.

"To give full play to the basic supporting role of the railway to major strategic plans - the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the development of the Yangtze River economic belt, and the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the NDRC and related parties are speeding up the preparation of the specialized transportation planning," Meng said on Wednesday during an NDRC news conference in Beijing. "Several major projects have begun initial work. When the conditions are in place, they'll get approved."

China invested 449.6 billion yuan ($63.4 billion) in rail fixed assets in the first eight months of 2019,NDRC data showed.

According to the 2019 government report, 800 billion yuan will be invested in railway construction by the end of this year.

"We will work with related parties to focus on targeted investment and effective investment, to promote economic and social development,"Meng added.

The announced investment drive comes as the Chinese economy moderated in August amid mounting downward pressure.

In the first eight months of 2019, investment in fixed assets, excluding rural households, surged 5.5 percent year-on-year, 0.2 percentage point lower than that in the first seven months, data from National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Meanwhile, investment in infrastructure increased 4.2 percent year-on-year, 0.4 percentage point higher than that in the first seven months. Among the total infrastructure investment, investment in rail transport increased by 11 percent.

Experts said the focus of steady investment in the second half of 2019 is to stabilize manufacturing investment and increase investment in infrastructure.

"Despite some structural highlights, the slower growth in production, investment and consumption means that we are likely to see a slowdown in economic growth in the third quarter," Orient Securities said in a new research note. "We need to focus on the infrastructure investment, which will be key to stabilize the investment."

Tang Jianwei, chief researcher at the Financial Research Center of the Bank of Communications, noted in a new report that the significant jump in infrastructure investment came as the government has taken a series of measures to boost infrastructure construction and address inadequacies.

"As the country ramps up the issuance of local government bonds and the construction industry recovers, we may see strong growth in infrastructure investment," Tang said.

Illegal licenses of artisanal mining to be revoked www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. The Cabinet gave orders to corresponding government organizations and officials to speed up the works targeted to erasing negative environmental impacts of artisanal mining, protection of environment, land rehabilitation and stop illegal mining activities and take enhanced control.

IMF: ‘aid flood’ to Mongolia to end www.news.mn

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team led by Mr. Geoff Gottlieb visited Mongolia from 19 to 28 June, 2019, to conduct discussions for the 2019 Article IV consultations. The IMF’s Executive Board for Discussion and Decision has concluded the reports presented by the team and made the following statement:

Powering the West www.news.mn

The Mongolian Cabinet has decided to take a total of 28,000 hectares of land in the Erdeneburen and Myangad Soums of Khovd Province, the Bayannuur Soum of Bayan-Ulgii Province and Umnugobi Soum of Uvs Province for hydroelectric power station construction. The government’s top plan is to construct the Erdeneburen Hydroelectric Power Station within four years with a total investment of USD288 million. Nearly 90 percent of the financing will come from a USD 1 billion soft loan by from the Chinese Government.

Mongolia’s mineral exports dependence may curtail economic growth www.zgm.mn

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the Article IV consultation with Mongolia, highlighting the country’s vulnerability to external shocks given its high debt levels and the economy’s dependence on mineral exports. Collapses to mineral demand can lead to a sharp fall in exports, weakening growth outlook and fiscal accounts, said the IMF in the report.

Changing the face of mining in Mongolia www.cimic.com.au

Thiess’ Erdenetsetseg Narantsatsralt is part of the first wave of women legally allowed to work underground in Mongolia.

The civilizational dimension of foreign policy www.telegraphindia.com

That Delhi Cantonment has a long road called Ulaanbaatar Marg seems quite intriguing. I don’t know whether, like the Murree Gate, the Kashmiri Gate and the Lahori Gate in the old city, this is an old name that has persisted in the new city, or like the streets named after Josip Tito, Archbishop Makarios and Gamal Abdel Nasser, is a feature of post-Independence non-aligned/Third World diplomacy. Whatever the historical reality — and I am tempted to believe that this is an old name that has somehow survived — Ulaanbaatar is a very long way from Delhi.

It took me nearly 17 hours — which included a seven-hour wait at the airport in Seoul — to get from Delhi to the capital of the country that used to be called Outer Mongolia, distinguished from Inner Mongolia which is a part of China. The journey would have been a few hours shorter had I chosen to fly via Hong Kong. However, with the troubles in that city occasionally spilling over into the airport, the travel agent advised against an incremental surge in the quantum of adventure.

Ulaanbaatar is a very long way from the dusty plains of Hindustan. Before motor and air transport entered the picture, it must have taken the horse and camel caravans nearly two years, including a forbidding journey across the great Gobi Desert, to get from Delhi to Ulaanbaatar. Even the mighty Genghis Khan, the redoubtable 13th-century warrior whose empire extended from Ukraine and Georgia in the west to China, including much of Central Asia, stopped at the gates of India. At one time, after his conquests of Bukhara, Samarkand, Tabriz and Bamiyan, not to mention much of China, his Mongol chiefs had contemplated a military expedition to India. However, if a modern historian is to be believed, the mighty Genghis vetoed the swoop on India because he couldn’t bear the soaring summer temperatures. Timur or Tamerlane, who married into the Genghis Khan family, realized that Mongol dream in the 14th century in a spectacularly brutal way. However, it was Timur’s descendant Babur who brought the tradition of the steppes into India by founding the Mughal empire which endured till 1857.

The tradition of pan-Mongolism, which appealed to many Asian nationalists in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, sought to link the outposts and the subsequent history of Genghis Khan’s huge empire by a common thread. While this is an interesting narrative that once served as a counterpoint to European domination, the commonalities are very tenuous today.

I was in Mongolia for a two-day Hindu-Buddhist dialogue on conflict avoidance and the environment. It was held at the imposing Gandan monastery (picture) in the heart of Ulaanbaatar and graciously hosted by the Khamba Lama, who occupies a pivotal place in the unofficial hierarchy of Buddhist monks in Mongolia. The Gandan monastery — which now boasts a new central temple built by the government of India — has a chequered history. Following the anti-Buddhist purges of the 1930s by the communists, most monasteries were either closed or destroyed and the priceless manuscripts and artefacts either destroyed or stolen. Buddhism was outlawed and nearly 30,000 monks were killed. Gandan survived because the communists needed a token monastery to show visitors that religious practices remained undisturbed under socialism.

Six decades of regimented communist rule had a catastrophic effect on the character of the Mongolian people. Apart from the loss of invaluable treasures, it snapped a tradition of classical learning that had been shaped by the Buddhist inheritance of Tibet and even India. But more than the scholasticism of the monks, the attempt to secularize Mongolian culture left a huge cultural void, particularly among the generations who felt uprooted.

Today’s Mongolia is a study in contrasts. Outwardly, there is a country with imperfect infrastructure, international brands, an excess of SUVs and absolutely infuriating traffic jams in Ulaanbaatar. This is not to mention the pollution in the city. However, existing on a parallel track is the world that is sought to be preserved and lovingly nurtured by the Buddhist monks in monasteries such as the Gandan or even the Pethub Stangey Choskhorling monastery established by the great Ladakhi spiritual leader Kushak Bakula Rinpoche in 1999. Kushak Bakula served as India’s ambassador to Mongolia from 1990 to 2000 and played a seminal role in recovering Buddhism for post-communist Mongolia.

Buddhism in Mongolia is more than just a spiritual and religious tradition. It is the link between its past and present and exists as an upholder of the Mongolian way of life. Genghis Khan was not a Buddhist. Like other herdsmen of the steppes, he worshipped the open blue sky and had a special veneration for Mount Burkhan Khaldun near the Siberian border — an area that till recently was considered out of bounds because it was the sacred space of Genghis Khan. Yet today, this national hero of Mongolia whose imposing statue looks over the main square of Ulaanbaatar has been incorporated as a key spiritual figure in the Mahayana Buddhism of Mongolia.

The seamless merger of spiritualism, history and the Mongolian way of life is quite striking. Coinciding with the conference, the Gandan monastery also hosted a Naadam — the traditional games that centred on archery, wrestling and horse riding. The sporting events were preceded by an elaborate ritual of traditional dance and music aimed at invoking the gods and driving out the evil spirits. The musicians and dancers were professional artistes. As the Khamba Lama explained to me, they were monks who had spent the preceding six days in prayer and meditation — the necessary preparation for the event.

The event was conducted in a stadium with a striking backdrop. There was a gigantic hand-embroidered tapestry of Vajrasena and below that was a depiction of a serene Genghis Khan who is also venerated as a spiritual guide. The stylized dance was performed by monks dressed in traditional Mongolian finery and masks. It is interesting to note that the elaborate use of silk dates back to the 13th century and Genghis Khan’s subjugation of kingdoms in China. Prior to that, Mongolian tribesmen had been bereft of luxuries and were dependent only on animal skin and fur.

In the outer circle of the pageant were those dressed up as gods who were the protector of the elements — a throwback to some features of Mongolia’s pre-Buddhist faiths. These included at least three figures that have a place in Hindu mythology: the elephant-headed Ganesh, Saraswati and Yama represented by two walking skeletons. The ceremonial burning of the evil spirits in a huge bonfire was an elaborate affair in which all the important monks, including the Khamba Lama, participated.

I did not stay for the entire Naadam which stretched into the late evening. However, what was amply clear is that organized Buddhism in Mongolia had evolved well beyond concerns of the personal salvation of the monks. In the post-communist world, where the country now boasts a reasonably vibrant democracy, religion has extended to upholding the traditional Mongolian way of life and, equally important, Mongolian nationalism.

India enjoys a tremendous goodwill in Mongolia. From today, the Mongolian president, accompanied by the Khamba Lama, is visiting India. Of course, there will be the usual agreements on trade and services — we can be a major market for Mongolia’s evolved cashmere knitwear industry, and they can benefit from India’s information technology services and scholarships to students. However, the soft power linkages between the two civilizations must proceed autonomously. Foreign policy must incorporate a civilizational dimension.

By Swapan Dasgupta

Mongolia intensifies battle against drugs www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia has been intensifying its fight against drugs, a senior official of the country's National Police Agency (NPA) said Wednesday.

INVITATION: Business seminar during Inspireme Festival on 21st September at White Rock Centre www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com

The British Embassy Ulaanbaatar invites you to Inspireme Festival on 21st September 2019 at White Rock Centre.