Curfew in Nepal towns as turmoil clouds peace deal
Source: Reuters
(Recasts lead; adds minister quote paragraph 7; colour, 4) By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Hundreds of riot police patrolled two southeastern Nepal towns on Tuesday, imposing a day curfew after violent anti-government protests by ethnic Madhesis which have clouded a peace process ending a decade of civil war. Four people were killed and dozens wounded in Monday's clashes between police and protesters from the Terai plain who say they have been sidelined by the peace deal that brought former Maoist rebels into the political mainstream. The latest violence in the town of Lahan, 125 km (80 miles) southeast of the capital, Kathmandu, was the worst since the November peace deal ended a decade of killings, abductions and disappearances that had left 13,000 people dead. Local television showed Lahan's deserted streets with the charred remains of buses torched by protesters at the weekend. The government held an emergency meeting on Tuesday and called for talks with political groups involved in the conflict, including the Madhesi People's Rights Forum that organised the protests. The forum says the peace deal offers little for people living in the Terai region, the bread basket of impoverished Nepal where about half of the country's 26 million people live.. "We believe all problems can be resolved through dialogue. That is the right way," cabinet spokesman Dilendra Prasad Badu said after Tuesday's emergency session. "REGIONAL AUTONOMY" The Terai is a narrow strip of fertile flat land. Its Madhesi inhabitants share closer cultural links with neighbouring India than with Nepalis in the Himalayan mountains of the north. "We want a federal structure of government and regional autonomy for Terai ... We want elimination of discriminations against the people of Terai including racial, lingual, cultural and economic," group president Upendra Yadav told Reuters. The November deal was not in immediate danger, analysts said, but the violence could slow down what was in the past month a fast-moving peace process. The Maoists have joined an interim parliament and started to lock up their weapons. In a boost for international support for the peace deal, the U.N. Security Council agreed on Monday to a new mission in Nepal expected to include 186 military personnel to help monitor disarmament of the Maoists. The United Nations wants to ensure the army stays in barracks in the run up to planned June elections for an assembly to prepare a new constitution and decide the future of the monarchy, which the Maoists want abolished. "This violence will not derail the peace process," said Lok Raj Baral, chief of the Nepal Centre for Strategic Studies, a private think tank. PEACE AFFECTED? "But continued trouble will only make the people disillusioned and adversely affect the peace process," he said, adding that the protests could pressure the multiparty government to consider a federal structure of government. In a bid to quash any spread of unrest, authorities extended the curfew in Lahan on Tuesday to the neighbouring town of Siraha. Lahan has been in turmoil since a Maoist activist fired at protesters from the Madhesi community last week and a 16-year-old boy was killed. On Monday, hundreds of Madhesi protesters tried to storm a police station in Lahan, prompting police to fire at the crowd in self-defence, officials said. The government and Maoists say forces opposed to the peace deal were conspiring to create the unrest to sabotage the assembly vote. Nepal was plunged into political turmoil in early 2005 when King Gyanendra dismissed the government and took absolute power. He backed down last year after mass street protests organised by political parties and supported by the Maoists.
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