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KATHMANDU, Friday (AFP) The second-in-command of Nepal's Maoist rebels accused the United States and the Royal Nepal Army of trying to sabotage peace talks with the government.

Addressing a press conference at their newly opened office in Kathmandu, Babu Ram Bhattarai said: "The United States and the Nepalese Army are trying to sabotage the ongoing peace dialogue."

"The foreign power is trying to sabotage the peace talks by interfering militarily by supplying arms and training the army personnel."

The United States has strongly supported Nepal's government, which was fighting the Maoist rebels until both sides declared a ceasefire on January 29, offering 12 million dollars this year.

The Maoists fiercely resent the aid and have attacked and damaged Coca-Cola factories in Nepal in protest.

Last month the rebels under their official name - the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist - appeared for the first time on the US State Department's annual blacklist as a terrorist group.

The government and the rebels have held two round of peace talks. At the latest on May 9, the rebels said the army would be restricted to within five kilometres (three miles) of their barracks.

However, Bhattarai said there were reports in the local media that an army spokesman had said there was no question of restricting soldiers unless the Maoists gave up their arms.

"The statement of the army spokesman goes against the letter and spirit of the Code of Conduct," he said. Meanwhile, government negotiator Ramesh Nath Pandey told BBC radio that the five kilometre restriction had not been finalized as it was not signed in the official peace talks minute book.

"By making a false statement, Pandey has tried to create confusion among the people and in the country," Bhattarai said. "We have conveyed our protests to Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand and head of the official negotiating team Deputy Prime Minister Badri Prasad Mandal over the statements made by the army spokesman and the peace talks team member Pandey," Bhattarai said.

"If it is the bad intention of the peace team member to affect the peace talks, this will discourage our peace efforts," he said.

The Maoists and 10 other left-wing parties met Thursday on how to carry forward the peace talks as well as a political movement against the king.

The main five political parties in the country earlier this month launched a campaign of protests against King Gyanendra's October 4 dismissal of elected prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his appointment one week later of an interim government headed by Chand, a staunch royalist.

"The eleven leftist parties at their meeting have decided that the political movement launched by five parties represented in the dissolved parliament and the on-going peace dialogue between the government and the NCP-Maoists should be complementary and supplementary to each other to fulfill their respective objectives," a party official said.

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