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| Tuesday, 13 April 2004 |
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Nepal minister offers all-party Govt in bid to end opposition rallies KATHMANDU, Monday (AFP) Nepal's royalist home minister offered to form an all-party government Sunday to meet the key demand of the opposition and end its massive pro-democracy protests targeting King Gyanendra. The offer came hours after the king returned to the capital Kathmandu where police again clashed with opposition supporters, whose two weeks of demonstrations have brought tens of thousands to the streets. "If all the political parties stop the current agitation and come forward for talks with the government, an all-party government can be formed soon," Home Minister Kamal Thapa said at an impromptu press conference in Kathmandu. The king had infuriated the opposition by not cutting short his two-week tour of western Nepal, where state television showed him comforting victims of a Maoist rebellion and being greeted warmly by villagers who view him as a god. But as he returned, a minister told AFP on condition of anonymity that the king may be willing to hold talks with the opposition leaders who lost power when Gyanendra sacked the elected government two years ago. The royalist government banned demonstrations indefinitely in Kathmandu after opposition parties threatened to storm the palace. The threats were scuttled Friday and Saturday as riot police rounded up demonstrators outside the palace, whose security has been reinforced by multiple barbed-wire barricades. The opposition says hundreds of their supporters have been injured and more than 1,000 detained after the demonstrations. However, a home ministry statement said only 155 protesters remained in custody. Thapa regretted that some protesters had been handled roughly but said the government would improve the prisoners' conditions, after the opposition charged they had no proper food or beds. The demonstrations had grown in size after the king offered another olive branch on March 28, offering to hold elections by April 2005. The opposition demanded the vote be held under an all-party government. In the latest clashes in Kathmandu, baton-wielding police dispersed 200 anti-monarchy protesters who damaged two police vans by hitting them with sticks, witnesses said. Police also rounded up 12 activists, some in wheelchairs, of the Nepal Disabled Association who were holding placards denouncing the king, an AFP reporter witnessed. The latest bid to end the unrest, however, could expose divisions with the opposition. The Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist led by the opposition's consensus prime ministerial candidate, Madhav Kumar Nepal, wants new elections. However, the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the last parliament, favours the restoration of the assembly where it would lead. In the latest sign of support for the demonstrations, the two unions representing bus and truck workers in the Himalayan kingdom announced they would side with the opposition against the king. The two unions represent more than 250,000 workers and could potentially devastate the landlocked country's fragile economy by refusing to run buses for tourists or to haul imports from India. |
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