KATHMANDU, Feb 19: Nepal’s King Gyanendra made his first formal approach to the country’s estranged political parties on Sunday, urging them to join talks and try to put democracy back on track.

Piling pressure on the unpopular monarch who seized power last year, more than 3,000 people marched in the capital on Sunday demanding a return to democracy.

Carrying red hammer-and-sickle banners, protesters squatted on a major thoroughfare in the temple-studded capital, shouting slogans against the king.

“We don’t want absolute monarchy ... We want democracy,” they chanted at the rally, organised by Nepal’s seven mainstream political parties, which say they have been sidelined by the king.

Sunday’s protests came hours after the monarch made his formal approach to the political parties.

“We, therefore, call on all willing political parties to come forth to fully activate, at the earliest, the stalled democratic process in the greater interest of the nation,” the king said in a national democracy day statement.

The king, who is camping in the resort town of Pokhara in west Nepal, also urged anti-monarchy Maoist rebels to shun violence and rejoin the mainstream.

“Let us listen to others, put across our views, do away with discord and enhance mutual understanding; let us consolidate peace and democracy,” he said.

Gyanendra plunged the Himalayan kingdom into turmoil in February 2005 when he seized absolute power, firing the government, jailing politicians and suspending civil liberties including media freedom. He said the move was necessary to quell the 10-year-old Maoist insurgency in which more than 13,000 people have died.

But he has faced near daily protests in recent weeks over the failure to restore democracy and treatment of political leaders.

“We can’t hold talks in a vacuum,” Sushil Koirala, a senior leader of the Nepali Congress party, the biggest group in the seven-party alliance protesting against the king, said in a brief comment. He did not elaborate.

There was no immediate response from the rebels to the king’s appeal.

The Maoists called on Saturday for an indefinite nationwide strike against the king from April 3.

In the capital, dozens of riot police in blue camouflage ringed the protest area but did not intervene.—Reuters