NEW DELHI, April 22: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday cautioned against Nepal becoming a failed state, but Nepali parties fighting King Gyanendra’s authoritarian rule described New Delhi’s position on a royal reconciliation as a betrayal.
“We cannot afford to have Nepal as a failed state... I’m not saying Nepal is a failed state,” Dr Singh was quoted by Press Trust of India as saying aboard his special plane en route to Germany.
“By and large, whatever steps the King has made, they are in the right direction,” Dr Singh told reporters.
He said it was important that multi-party democracy should be restored in Nepal and ‘there should be a government in place which exercises all the executive powers. The process has begun’.
India will do whatever it can for Nepal to strengthen the country in every possible way. “We have to help Nepal to deal with difficulties they have got into,” PTI quoted him as saying.
“Our role is that of a conciliator to ensure that democratic process is restored ...Our role is to ensure that all elements of Nepalese polity are talking to each other. Now I hope the King and political parties will talk about future consequential steps,” Dr Singh said.
‘BETRAYAL’: Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper, reporting from Kathmandu, said on Saturday Nepal’s political parties had described as ‘betrayal’ India’s support for King Gyanendra’s stand on the crisis.
“Indian ambassador Shiv Shankar Mukherjee met the king for more than an hour this morning but did not take the parties into confidence about what transpired in the talks,” The Telegraph said. “India’s controversial role in what was being described by some as ‘a dirty quick-stitch solution’ may come in for questioning by the agitators.”
“There is no room to be optimistic about the king’s proclamation,” Sher Bahadur Deuba, president of the Nepali Congress (Democratic), was quoted as saying.
According to The Telegraph the Nepali monarch was unapologetic about his snatching of power. He, in fact, justified all his actions since Oct 2002 claiming that he had done so ‘to set in motion a meaningful exercise in multi-party democracy’ and for ‘ensuring peace and security and corruption-free good governance’.
“The king left out several major issues agitating the people. He said nothing about restoring Parliament — a key demand of the political parties; made no promise that the transfer of power was irreversible; gave no indication of who would deal with the Maoists and how; and said nothing about who would control the Royal Nepal Army,” it said.
