KATHMANDU: The United Nations resumed checks on Tuesday to determine if thousands of Maoists confined to camps are genuine fighters, a spokesman said, six weeks after a row about status halted the process.

Critics have accused the former rebels of boosting their number of combatants in order to exercise more clout.

The former rebels have said all 31,000 people registered in 28 UN-monitored camps are ex-fighters but analysts say the real number is about a third. “Verification started in Sindhuli on Tuesday morning,” Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) said, referring to a district 80 kilometres east of Kathmandu.

The Maoists have been confined to the camps as part of a landmark peace deal reached with the government late last year ending a decade-long civil war.

Analysts say during the conflict the Maoist army totalled about 10,000 and that the ex-rebels packed their ranks with new recruits to bolster their position as the peace deal was being struck.

The UN disqualified around 900 people from a camp containing 3,000 at the end of June, because they were either under-age or joined the Maoist army after a May 2006 deadline, local media reported.—AFP