Nepal to seek peace talks with rebels

KATHMANDU - Nepal's newly appointed royalist government will soon appoint negotiators who will hold unconditional peace talks with Maoist rebels, local media reported.

It is the first step toward a peaceful end to a bloody Maoist revolt since King Gyanendra seized power a week ago, but is also being twinned with an increased army offensive and an appeal for the guerrillas to give up their weapons.

"(The government) is going to form a dialogue committee that will hold a dialogue with the Maoists soon," Culture and Aviation Minister Buddhiraj Bajracharya said, according to the Kathmandu Post.

"Now they should come for dialogue without any condition."

Bajracharya, one of the most senior members of Gyanendra's new 10-member cabinet, also said the king did not plan to ban political parties, despite arresting party leaders when he sacked the government last week.

The ousted government's failure to make any progress in ending the nine-year Maoist rebellion that has killed more than 11,000 people was one of the reasons Gyanendra gave for his abrupt move.

The Maoists had maintained they wanted to deal directly with the king rather than a puppet government, but they have also strongly condemned his sudden assumption of power and suspension of democracy and threatened to blockade the capital, Kathmandu.

In a demonstration of their strength, they sealed off the city for a week in August through the threat of violence alone rather than any physical action.

Gyanendra's sacking of the government, suspension of civil rights and muzzling of the press has drawn worldwide condemnation from governments and rights groups.

Leading Nepali human rights groups say he has effectively implemented military rule.

After the king declared the state of emergency, which included cutting the tiny Himalayan nation's communications with the outside world, the army said it would step up its offensive against the guerrillas in a bid to force them into peace talks.

Analysts say his seizure of power was aimed at giving the army a free hand to take on the rebels, although both sides admit they cannot win on the battleground and can only fight to strengthen their hand in any future peace talks.

Opponents of the king are struggling to rally protests against his move, which many say takes the world's only Hindu kingdom back to its feudal past, before democracy began in 1990.

But with hundreds of political activists and leaders, including ousted prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his cabinet, under house arrest or behind bars, phone lines cut and the media censored, opponents have been unable to organise any serious public resistance so far.

In one of the first open, but muted, signs of criticism of the king's move, The Kathmandu Post published an editorial urging the king to reconsider his muzzling of the press.

"As a legal entity governed by the law of the land, we are not in a position to challenge the government. Nor do we intend to do so. However, we strongly feel that the government should reconsider ... and let the media play its role in nurturing democracy," the Post editorial said.

The editorial also appeared in the Post's Nepali language sister publication, Kantipur. Journalists say soldiers are sitting in newsrooms vetting stories before they are published.

- REUTERS