Kathmandu: Hours after declaring that he
would not hold talks with the "puppet government" in Nepal,
Maoists supremo Prachanda took a U-turn as he met the Prime
Minister in a bid to end the political crisis, which threatens
to spark a fresh round of violence in the country.
Nepal's main opposition party Unified Communist Party
of Nepal (Maoist) yesterday threatened to paralyse the country
with an indefinite general strike from Jan 24 and declared
that it would no longer hold talks with Nepal’s ruling parties
who were "robots" "remote-controlled" by India.
However, Prachanda met Madhav Kumar Nepal along with
hardliner Maoist leader Mohan Vaidya Kiran yesterday to find a
way out of the political crisis which threatens to engulf the
country in a fresh round of violence. They also discussed
about the Nepal forthcoming visit to China, according to
sources close to the Prime Minister.
The Maoist supremo told his supporters at the end
of the party's three-day anti-government agitation that he has
no hopes of ending the current deadlock through dialogue with
Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML as they act as
per the orders from New Delhi.
Prachanda had also demanded the scrapping of the 1950
Indo-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty along with all other
“unequal” pacts with India.
The former rebel leader also called for the withdrawal
of Indian troops from Kalapani, a disputed part of Nepal’s
territory on the borders of India, Nepal and China.
His remarks about talking directly to New Delhi comes
ahead of a planed three-day visit by Indian Foreign Minister
S. M. Krishna to Nepal in mid-January.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, December 23, 2009, 19:31