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To gain time, the central government is ventilating the idea of establishing a States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) to evaluate the different demands, to interview all the concerned parties and to establish some criteria for defining new states.
INDIAN CATHOLIC
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Pope talks religious harmony with Kazakh president
Published : November 09 2009
VATICAN CITY : Pope Benedict XVI met Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev in a private audience in the Vatican on Nov. 6.
The men discussed dialogue between religions and noted the harmonious relations between the different faiths in the predominantly-Muslim central Asian Republic.
The Pope said he hoped "that believers may have an ever more active role in the life of the nation" for the common good, according to a Vatican statement released afterward.
The Vatican said the two men also discussed the current global economic crisis in light of the Pope's recent social encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" (Charity in Truth), as well as the contribution the Church can make to Kazakhstan.
The communique said the Pope and the Kazakh leader noted "with satisfaction the good relations that exist between the Holy See and the Republic of Kazakhstan."
Pope Benedict received Nazarbayev, a Muslim and former secretary general of the country's Communist Party, in his private library at the end of the Kazakh leader's two-day trade and cooperation visit to Italy.
The two spoke in private for about 20 minutes. Nazarbayev then spoke with the Pope's right hand man, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and the Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Dominque Mamberti.
Kazakhstan will assume the presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2010. The OSCE, with 56 participating states, is the world's largest regional security organization.
Catholics constitute a tiny minority of Kazakhstan's 16-million-strong population, numbering only 250,000. About 60 percent of the population is Muslim. Russian Orthodox Christians comprise 34 percent while the Oriental-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church has 7,000 members.
Catholics in Kazakhstan are mainly of German, Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian descent. Their forebears were deported there under former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's rule.
Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to the country in 2001 when he met President Nazarbayev.
Today, the Church here has one archdiocese, two dioceses and the apostolic administration of Atyrau.
Courtesy : UCAN
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