November 15, 2001	Thursday	Shaba’an 28, 1422

KATHMANDU, Nov 14: Nepal’s government has said it will consider making changes to the country’s constitution in line with a demand by Maoist, officials said on Wednesday.

The government made its offer during a third round of peace talks with the Maoists which took place on Tuesday.

“We said that the government could agree to make changes in the present constitution if necessary and asked the Maoists to suggest the changes they wanted which would best serve the interests of the Nepalese people,” a member of the government negotiating team and Minister for Agriculture Mahesh Acharya said.

The compromise followed one made by the Maoists, who last week said they had “deferred” their demand for an end to the constitutional monarchy — a move which paved the way for Tuesday’s talks.

The Maoists have been fighting the government since 1996 and more than 1,800 people have died in the violence.

The two sides agreed a ceasefire in July, but the first two rounds of talks had yielded little progress amid Maoists insistence that Nepal scrap its constitutional monarchy.

The leader of the government negotiating team, Minister for Public Works and Transport Chiranjbi Wagle, said: “It is a great and satisfying move of the Maoists to formally drop the demand for a republic from their proposal.

“The six-hour long peace talks in a friendly and cordial atmosphere helped both sides to express the respective views on the current problem,” Wagle said.

But he said that although the Maoists said they had deferred the republic issue, they were still insisting that a constituent assembly be set up to redraft the constitution.

“We argued since the issue of republic has been deferred, there is no point of talking about the constituent assembly election as the present constitution has enough grounds to meet the interest of the Nepalese people,” he said.

But Acharya added that instead of the constituent assembly the government was prepared to look into making changes to the constitution. The issue will be discussed at the next round of talks, likely to be held at the end of November. —AFP