March 29, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1428

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s multi-party government does not intend to share power fairly with the Maoists and this may jeopardise the peace process in the Himalayan nation, a top former rebel leader said on Wednesday.

“As yet, we have not reached a dead end but the dangers are there for a deadlock and the whole peace process may get stalled,” Baburam Bhattarai, widely considered as number two to Maoist chief Prachanda, told reporters in an interview.

The Maoists, who had been fighting Nepal’s monarchy since 1996, signed a peace deal with the government in November declaring an end to the conflict which killed more than 13,000 people.

The deal envisages them joining an interim administration to oversee this year’s elections for a constituent assembly.

That body will map out the impoverished country’s political future, including that of the monarchy, which the Maoists want abolished.

Bhattarai said Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was refusing to give Maoists senior positions in the planned interim government and wanted to keep the key defence, home and finance portfolios within his own party.

“The prime minister is taking a very adamant and unjustifiable stand,” Bhattarai said.

“He is going back on some of the past commitments.”

Bhattarai said major ministries should not be held by just one party.

“If that happens that party may rig the elections.”

But Koirala’s centrist Nepali Congress has rejected such claims, saying it had to hold such portfolios at a “critical period of time” in Nepal’s history.

“It is not proper for the Maoists to raise this issue now,” said Ram Chandra Poudel, a senior leader of the Nepali Congress.

The Maoists by pushing for senior cabinet positions may themselves delay the constituent assembly election, Poudel added.

MAOIST BEHAVIOUR PROBLEMS: Under the peace deal the Maoists have confined 31,000 feared fighters to camps, locked some 3,500 weapons under the supervision of the United Nations and have sent 83 nominees to the 329-member interim parliament, formed in Jan 2007.

But some mainstream parties, including the Nepali Congress, say the Maoists continue extortions, kidnappings and intimidation and insist in a change in Maoist behaviour before their leaders are named in the cabinet.

The peace process has also been clouded by deadly clashes between Maoists and members of the ethnic Madhesi community, who live in Nepal’s southern plains. Dozen have died in the unrest since January.

Bhattarai said if interim cabinet was not formed in a few days, elections will not be possible by mid-June.

“If that happens then that will be against the spirit of the peace deal, the peace process could be stalled, could be jeopardised,” said Bhattarai, sitting under the portraits of communist revolutionary icons such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao in his office in downtown Kathmandu. —Reuters