February 01, 2008	Friday	Muharram 22, 1429

KATHMANDU: A massive bomb attack at an election rally in ethnically tense southern Nepal marks a serious escalation of violence by groups intent on derailing the country’s fragile peace process, analysts said on Thursday.

The attack late on Wednesday left 55 people with shrapnel wounds, and raises doubts of whether the polls scheduled for April 10 that will decide the impoverished country’s political future can be a success, they warned.

“The bomb on Wednesday at the mass meeting was a show of strength by the armed groups,” Prashant Jha, a journalist and researcher in southern Nepal issues, said.

“Next, they will kill election candidates and bomb more mass meetings. Violence will escalate,” he grimly predicted.

Nepal’s southern Terai region is home to around half of Nepal’s 27 million people, and its residents — known as Mahadhesis — have long complained they have been treated as second-class citizens and excluded from the capital’s corridors of power.

Unrest in the south kicked off shortly after the country’s mainstream parties and Maoist insurgents signed a peace deal in November 2006 that ended a decade of civil war, but still left ethnic activists in the south feeling left out of politics.

The bombing came as the Maoists and main parties were trying to rally support in the south for the April elections, which will elect a body that will rewrite the constitution and most likely abolish the monarchy.

“This is a strong sign of things to come,” Jha said of the bombing. “Under the current circumstances, a meaningful constituent assembly election is not possible.” The polls are a crucial part of the peace process, and have already been postponed twice in 2007.

The vacuum of last year left an opportunity for ethnic militants in the south to emerge — apparently with easy access to arms and ammunition from across the border in India — and at least 200 people have already died in violent protests and targeted murders.

The militants are demanding that the government grant the Terai people increased and immediate autonomy.

They have said that until they get more representation in the security sector as well as local and national government, they will not allow the elections to take place.

Chandrakishore Jha another journalist and researcher in Terai issues, said Wednesday’s bombing was particularly worrying.

“This was the first time the armed groups targeted the police directly. The bombing was a challenge to the state,” said the journalist, who was at the scene of the attack in Birgunj, 80km south of Kathmandu.

“It indicates that the polls in the Terai will be full of bloodshed,” he added.

Chandrakishore said the militants went for the police because there were around 2,000 officers at the venue. Two small bombs that caused no injuries were also thrown during the day, one at a police van, the other at a group of police.

The United Nations has already told politicians in Kathmandu to pay more attention to the south, and diplomats said the bombing should serve as a wake-up call for Nepal’s interim government.

“We encourage the government to reach out to the Mahadhesis, and to build trust with the Mahadhesi leaders and people,” said Darren Nance, the field director for the Carter Center, in Nepal to monitor the forthcoming polls.

“There is no place for violence in a political campaign for elections,” added Nance, who heads the Nepal office of the organisation founded by former US president Jimmy Carter.

A diplomat with a Western embassy in Kathmandu agreed.

“The bomb blast was a clear demonstration that a security response alone is not enough,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

“You need to build a political response. The problems in the Terai can be solved, it just requires the political will to do it,” the diplomat said.—AFP