U.N. to expand Nepal arms monitoring next week
Source: Reuters
By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU, Jan 27 (Reuters) - United Nations officials are expected to expand their arms monitoring operations to more Maoist camps next week, a top U.N. envoy said. The first arms were locked earlier this month at two sites and the world body is keen to maintain the momentum. "Our monitoring teams should be able to complete the process at the first two sites by Sunday, and move to three cantonment sites in the west," Ian Martin, who reports on the peace process to the U.N. Secretary General told Reuters late on Friday. Two other sites in the east of the Himalayan nation will be taken up after that, he said. The guns will be stored in locked metal containers at the seven sites and guarded by U.N. monitors around the clock. The rebels will keep the keys, and the army has vowed to store a similar number of weapons. Maoists have already joined a provisional parliament under a peace deal struck in November and are expected to join an interim government less than a year after ending a decade-long civil war that killed 13,000 people. Martin said he could not say when the arms handovers would be completed -- they are being carried out inside high-security camps out of bounds for the media -- and that more detailed information on combatants would be gathered. Maoist leaders say they have 35,000 fighters, all of whom have to be confined to 28 camps as part of the peace process, but human rights group say the rebels have recruited children in recent months to boost their numbers. "We are working over time yet we can register only 900 or 1,000 fighters a day," said Pasang, a Maoist commander involved in the monitoring work. "This way it will take another three weeks or more." Last week, James Moriarty, the US ambassador in Nepal, said the Maoists were trying to buy hand-made weapons in the neighbouring Indian state of Bihar, which would be handed to the U.N. allowing them to retain their modern arms. The Maoists and the government reject the claim.
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