By IANS
Kathmandu : Former US president and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter will arrive in Kathmandu again next week on a second Nepal peace mission.
Carter, who has advocated that the US government establish contacts with the Maoists though they are currently on the American watch list of terrorist organisations, arrives Wednesday on a four-day visit, the Carter Center said.
This will be his second visit in less than six months.
He had come on a peace mission in June when he hailed Nepal’s Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala as his hero and met Maoist supreme Prachanda, making it the first high-profile meeting ever between an American and the guerrillas.
Carter will be here to “encourage Nepal’s political leaders to make sustained efforts toward peace and to achieve a climate in which a constituent assembly election can be held”, the Carter Center said.
He will be accompanied by Jeff Carter, assistant project director of the Center’s Conflict Resolution Program; Ambassador A. Peter Burleigh, Carter Center senior advisor; David Pottie, associate director of the Center’s Democracy Program; and Darren Nance, Carter Center Nepal field director.
The delegation will meet government officials, political party leaders, the Election Commission, and representatives of civil society organisations and marginalised groups.
The Carter Center was invited by the Nepal government to observe the constituent assembly election. However, the critical election was postponed twice and there is no indication when it will be held.
Nepal’s parliament begins its new session Monday, when the Maoists and their Left allies will try to corner Koirala and his Nepali Congress party and try to have the house proclaim Nepal a republic.
A confrontation between the Maoists and Koirala seems inevitable with the Nepali Congress leadership meeting Sunday and deciding they would reject the Maoist demands in the house.
In a bid to put further pressure on the government, Maoists Sunday held mass meets in the capital and other districts, warning yet again that they would start a new street movement if they were defeated in parliament.
They have also called for a new government with reshuffled ministries and the disbanding of the newly formed peace and reconstruction ministry that is headed by a minister from Koirala’s party.