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UPDATE 1-Nepal rebel chief rules out peace talks
18 Apr 2005 10:43:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
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(Adds details) By Simon Denyer NEW DELHI, April 18 (Reuters) - Nepal's elusive Maoist rebel leader "Prachanda" has ruled out peace talks or a ceasefire with the government, predicting that the nine-year-old war would see the Maoists come to power soon. "Right now, we do not see any possibility of talks with these mediaeval and barbaric feudal autocrats," he told Reuters in an interview by email received on Monday. "Right now, the possibility of a ceasefire does not exist." Prachanda's combative words come two months after Nepal's King Gyanendra seized power, declared a state of emergency and vowed to bring peace to the desperately poor Himalayan kingdom, where civil war has killed more than 11,000 people since 1996. The army, which backed the king's power grab, vowed in February to step up its offensive against the Maoists, but has shown little sign of doing so yet. Gyanendra's hand-picked government is against holding talks with the Maoists, calling them "ghosts that need to be dealt with the stick". Prachanda, whose nom de guerre roughly means "awesome", responded with equal bitterness. "The seizure of power by the widely hated regicidal and fratricidal king is nothing else than the last and desperate attempt of feudal autocracy against the democratic thrust and aspiration of the Nepalese masses," he said. Gyanendra came to the throne after the 2001 palace massacre, when his elder brother, Birendra, was killed by his own son, the Crown Prince Dipendra, who then turned the gun on himself. The Maoists want to see Nepal's constitutional monarchy abolished and a Communist republic established in its stead. APPEALS TO POLITICAL PARTIES Prachanda said the Maoists would only consider talks if the king withdrew his Feb. 1 proclamation and seizure of power, and was prepared to hand over "all power to the people" by allowing elections for an assembly to draw up a new constitution. That would represent nothing less than complete capitulation for the king. The press has been muzzled, protests banned and many politicians locked up since the king declared a state of emergency. But the situation is even worse in the countryside, where villagers live in fear of both the Maoists and the army. Both sides are accused of widespread human rights abuses. Last month, the United Nations warned that Nepal is being pushed "towards the abyss of a humanitarian crisis". Prachanda renewed an appeal to Nepal's political parties, sidelined by the king, to unite with the rebels "against this autocratic monarchy, on the minimum programme of Constituent Assembly and democratic republic". He dismissed as "Goebble's (sic) propaganda" the army's claim that there was a split in rebel ranks between moderates who favour peace talks and hardliners who prefer a military solution. And, in a nod to the theories of China's Communist leader Mao Zedong, he said the People's War had entered its final phase, the so-called "strategic offensive". Prachanda's real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Born to an upper caste family of peasant farmers in Nepal's western mountains in 1954, the bespectacled and bearded leader has not been seen in public since the insurgency began. "Now we believe that People's War will be victorious in the near future," he said, adding that while the time frame was difficult to predict, victory would come "not in a distant but in a foreseeable future". Most analysts say the war is unwinnable by either side. A few thousand rebels can hardly hope to overcome an army of 80,000 men, but at the same time they are almost undefeatable in their remote, narrow and steep mountain valleys.
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