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Maoists wary about Shyam Saran’s Nepal mission

By IANS

Kathmandu : The arrival of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy Shyam Saran to hold parleys with Nepal’s key players on the eve of a crucial parliament vote is being viewed with suspicion by Maoists who feel he has advised the ruling parties to resist their demands.

Saran, who arrived Wednesday on a three-day mission, held talks separately with Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, Maoist chief Prachanda and Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist head Madhav Kumar Nepal. The rebels are concerned that he has urged the prime minister not to support the call for the abolition of monarchy via parliament.

Little official information was available about the outcome of Saran’s parleys. Though he met former prime ministers Sher Bahadur Deuba and Surya Bahadur Thapa and is scheduled to pay a visit to the Election Commission, unlike with other visits where the leaders briefed the media about the talks, there was no immediate comment on Saran’s meetings.

Even Koirala’s foreign affairs adviser Suresh Chalise, who has been regularly briefing journalists about the prime minister’s meetings with foreign dignitaries, remained unusually silent.

Only the Maoist mouthpiece, the Janadisha daily, Thursday came up with its version of what had transpired at some of Wednesday’s meetings.

It said that the Indian envoy had advised Koirala that “even if Nepal headed towards a republic after the constituent assembly election, to pre-empt that by agreeing to abolish monarchy through a parliamentary proclamation would mean strengthening the Maoists”.

For that reason, the envoy suggested that Koirala should not agree to the immediate abolition of monarchy at the special session of parliament that starts Thursday, the daily said.

It also said that Saran had asked Koirala to follow a “middle path” regarding the Maoist demand for a fully proportional electoral system.

Quoting unnamed sources in the Indian embassy, it said Saran had told Nepal that if there was a confrontation between Koirala’s Nepali Congress and the Maoists in parliament’s special session and the prospect of the pact between the rebels and the ruling alliance disintegrating, the communists should ally with Koirala since they would gain more from that.

Surprisingly, the Maoist daily remained silent about what had transpired between Prachanda and Saran.

Though India has expressed its unhappiness about the repeated postponement of the constituent assembly election and said Koirala’s government was losing its legitimacy, it would still have to support the ruling parties if it comes to a standoff between the coalition and the rebels, especially in view of the growing lawlessness seen in the Maoist ranks.

Nepal’s media community said that Maoists had abducted a journalist, Birendra Shah, from Bara district in south Nepal. The journalists would stage a protest near parliament Thursday before the special session began.

Saran will Thursday meet Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula, whose failure to curb the growing violence, especially in the Terai plains, has alarmed India.

Since this year, there have been at least three major carnages in the south, leading to thousands fleeing across the border to India.