By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Former US president Jimmy Carter began his four-day Nepal visit Wednesday with assiduity, plunging into parleys minutes after his arrival in Kathmandu.
The Nobel Peace Prize recipient, whose flight to Nepal was delayed, was forced to hold talks with a senior politician at the Tribhuvan International Airport itself due to lack of time.
Madhav Kumar Nepal, chief of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist that is a leading member of the ruling alliance and yet is supporting the Maoists in the current session of parliament, held quick parleys with Carter at the airport since he was flying out minutes later to Iran to attend an international conference.
Carter will also meet Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, Maoist supremo Prachanda, members of civil society and leaders of ethnic groups.
This is Carter’s second trip to Nepal since June.
The Carter Center, of which he is the president, has been monitoring the rights and security situation in Nepal since this year after it was invited by the Koirala government to oversee the crucial constituent assembly election.
During his June visit, Carter advocated that the American government, which still has the Maoists on its watch list of terrorist organisations, open up a channel of communications with the rebels.
Carter had also expressed concern about the deteriorating law and order situation in the Terai plains, and asked the government to initiate talks with the marginalized groups.
His arrival comes at a time when Nepal, though celebrating the first anniversary of the peace pact that ended the decade-old Maoist insurgency, is going through growing terror in the Terai plains due to the rise of over a dozen armed groups.