Nepal's Maoists today agreed to a three-month timeline to complete the integration process of its former guerrillas with the army, but insisted that its chief Prachanda must lead a national government in a bid to push forward the stalled peace process.
The Maoist leadership has proposed a timeline for integration and rehabilitation of their 19,000 combatants confined in various UN monitored cantonments, said Karin Landgren, chief of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), who met Maoist vice chairman Baburam Bhattarai yesterday.
The Maoists have said that they are ready to set three-month timeline to complete the integration process and I think it was positive, she told PTI today.
The Maoists were ready to complete the management of their combatants before the UNMIN’s deadline expires, she said.
However, the Unified CPN-Maoist has failed to determine the exact number of combatants to be integrated in the Nepal army in advance.
Around 4,000 were formally discharged this year after UN scrutiny found they did not qualify as soldiers, and several thousand more are thought to have drifted away from the camps and returned home in the intervening years.
But more than 15,000 are estimated to remain and their fate is a key stumbling block in the peace process.
Bhattarai said that they cannot agree to the demand of the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, which are stressing on determining the number of combatants to be integrated in the army.
The number can be fixed only after giving choice to the combatants, he added.
The Maoist combatants will be offered various choices such as jobs, skill development training, integration in the security forces and rehabilitation to the society under the management of the combatants.
Even as embattled prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal agreed to step down as part of an eleventh-hour deal to extend the term of the Constituent Assembly by one year on May 28, the political parties remain deadlocked over the agreement.
Leaders of the three major political parties -- the main Opposition CPN-Maoist, the Nepali Congress and the prime minister's Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) -- have repeatedly met but failed to reach an agreement end the standoff.
The Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, the two largest parties in the ruling 22-party coalition, have asked the prime minister not to resign unless the Maoists agree to a six-point agenda, including the integration of the PLA combatants and the dissolution of their paramilitary structure of the Young Communist League, the youth wing of the former rebels.
They also want the Maoists to return all properties captured by them during the decade-long insurgency that came to an end in 2006.
CPN-Maoist party, with nearly 40% of the parliamentary seats, today underlined its demand for a national government under its supremo Prachanda.
"But there should be no doubt that the party wants the formation of a national consensus government under its leadership and it will be led by our party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda)," Narayan Kazi Shrestha, Maoist party vice-chairman, was quoted as saying in the media.
The Maoists, who waged a decade-long insurgency, joined mainstream politics after a 2006 peace deal with the interim government led by GP Koirala.
Political tensions have been high in Nepal since a government led by the Maoists resigned last year amid a dispute with the country's President over the reinstatement of former army chief Rukmangad Katawal, who was dismissed by the Prachanda-led government last May.
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