Nepal's Maoists give up nearly 3,500 weapons - UN
Source: Reuters
(Adds analyst comment) KATHMANDU, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Nepal's Maoists have surrendered nearly 3,500 weapons as part of a peace deal with the government, but it was not clear if this accounted for all the arms in their possession, the chief U.N. monitor said on Friday. The United Nations Mission in Nepal, which completed registering former Maoist fighters and weapons at the weekend, said nearly 31,000 ex-guerrillas, most of them unarmed, had turned up at 28 camps set up under the November peace deal. "UNMIN is not and will not be in a position to state whether the weapons it has registered correspond to the full total of weapons held by the Maoist army," Ian Martin told a news conference. The U.N. announcement is the first official account of the size of the Maoist army and its weapons since the peace deal ended a 10-year civil war in which more than 13,000 people were killed. The pact has seen the former rebels join a provisional parliament and they are also due to enter the interim cabinet before elections to a constituent assembly this year. Martin said the arms registered in seven main camps and stored in containers included mortars, machine guns, automatic rifles, shotguns and home-made weapons. In the past, the Maoists had said they had 35,000 fighters but had not given details of their arms. Defence analyst Indrajit Rai said it was estimated the Maoists had about 8,000 weapons. "They have not shown all of them. They are not being honest in this aspect," he said. Villagers and rights groups in the Himalayan country also accuse the Maoists of recruiting people despite the peace process which started in May in an apparent attempt to boost their numbers. The government and the Maoists had asked the U.N. to monitor the management of arms and armies under the peace deal. The U.N. will also provide officers to help Nepal's election commission hold the polls, the country's first in eight years. In the final phase of the disarmament, the Nepal Army will store an equal number of arms.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
