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By Y.P. Rajesh and Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Nepal's King Gyanendra left the capital Kathmandu on Wednesday for a religious festival, making it unlikely he will meet a self-imposed deadline to form an interim government and ease a deep political crisis.

Gyanendra, who stunned the nation last Friday when he fired the prime minister and assumed power in a row over the timing of elections, left for his ancestral home in Gorkha, west of Kathmandu, for a Hindu festival.

A spokesman for the Nepali Congress, Nepal's largest political party, told Reuters the king was expected to return to Kathmandu on Thursday. "A meeting with the king is not possible today," he said.

Gyanendra had given parties until Wednesday to come up with names for an interim government to rule the Himalayan kingdom, beset by an increasingly deadly Maoist revolt and still coming to terms with last year's massacre of most of the royal family.

But the parties refused, saying they needed to know the terms of reference of the interim government.

The parties said it was up to the king to meet them to discuss forming a temporary administration.

They said that the king could unilaterally name an administration but that such a move could put the throne on a collision course with political parties.

"We are at a juncture where this crisis can take the path of confrontation or cooperation," Madhav Kumar Nepal, general-secretary of the Communist Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) party, Nepal's second largest party, said.

BOMB BLAST

"This (delay) is still a minor development compared to his violation of the constitution last week," said Krishna Hatechu, a political science professor at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan University.

Another analyst said the delay was unlikely to trigger public anger because there was little opposition at present to the king's decision to assume power.

"Political parties will certainly be unhappy with the delay and there is the risk of protests if the delay is prolonged," Dhurba Kumar, who heads Kathmandu's independent Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, told Reuters.

"But the parties are isolated from the public because of the poor governance and instability they have created," he said.

"There is very little public opposition to the king's decision as you can make out. But it is very difficult to say how they will react if a new government is not formed soon."

Suspected Maoist rebels set off a small bomb at a Norwegian-funded private hydro-electric project on Tuesday evening but the blast caused no major damage, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. It was the third blast since Gyanendra dismissed Deuba.

The other two explosions, in Kathmandu, caused no major damage.

Gyanendra said he had taken power under a constitutional clause allowing him to take "appropriate action" if Nepal faced a constitutional crisis. But experts said this provision was ambiguous.

Gyanendra said he had fired Deuba because of the premier's failure to stick to plans to hold November elections. But Deuba said his move to postpone the vote met the wishes of all parties who he said wanted a year-long delay because of threats by Maoist rebels to derail the vote.

The Maoists have stepped up their deadly campaign to replace the absolute monarchy with a communist republic since a state of emergency imposed last November ended on August 28.

The six-year revolt, which has claimed at least 5,000 lives, has scared away tourists and badly hit economic growth.

Gyanendra's assumption of power last week was the first time a king had assumed direct authority since parliamentary democracy replaced absolute monarchy in the world's only Hindu kingdom in 1990.

Analysts say the crisis, if not rapidly resolved, could further ravage the economy of one of the world's poorest nations. 

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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