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KATHMANDU, Tuesday (AFP) Nepal premier Surya Bahadur Thapa appealed to all the major political parties to cooperate with the government in holding peace talks with the Maoists.

"As the forthcoming peace talks with the Maoists will be mainly focussed on the major political issues, I appeal to all the party leaders in the disbanded parliament to come and discuss the political issues to be presented during the talks," Thapa told state-run television.

The official peace talks team aims to fix the date for the third round of peace talks with the Maoists as early as possible.

The party leaders from the Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist (NCP-UML) and the Nepali Congress (NC) rejected the call to join peace talks outright and vowed to continue their struggle against the government.

"There is no point in joining the government's peace team on the appeal of prime minister Thapa as we are have been demanding his removal to form an all-party government," an NCP-UML source said.

"We also want the king to reinstate the dissolved house of representatives," the source said.

King Gyanendra on October 4 dissolved parliament, and dismissed an elected prime minister, replacing him with a royalist prime minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand. The king then took the executive powers of the prime minister.

The agitating political parties have stepped up pressure on the king to reappoint the elected prime minister and return power to parliament.

Meanwhile, a Maoist source said two Maoist negotiators Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Ram Bahadur Thapa are arriving in Kathmandu in the next 48 hours to hold talks with different party leaders concerning the proposed third round of negotiations.

"Only after fixing the date for the third round of peace talks, the leader and the convenor of the Maoist peace talks team Babu Ram Bhattarai will be arriving with other two members," the Maoist source said.

The Maoists would open a public relations office in Kathmandu to improve communication with the local populace after a date is set for peace talks to begin, he added.

Meanwhile Nepal's main five political parties announced the seventh phase of their movement to protest against King Gyanendra's sacking of the elected prime minister. "The five political parties' seventh phase movement against the king's regressive steps will be centralized in Kathmandu, which will be final and successful," Nepali Congress (NC) president Girija Prasad Koirala told a press conference here.

"Under this two-week movement, I will go on a nation-wide tour to mobilize the NC's eight different professional organizations, including the Nepal Student's Union (NSU) and party cadres, to obtain popular public support," Koirala said, adding a relay hunger strike across the country which started in April will end on August 17.

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