KATHMANDU, July 2 (Reuters) - Nepal said on Wednesday it will request the United Nations to extend by six months its peace mission while the issue of rehabilitating thousands of former Maoist fighters, crucial to stability, gets resolved.

The integration of more than 19,000 former rebels, housed in U.N. supervised camps, with the regular army is key to capping a 2006 peace deal that ended a civil war and brought the rebels to the political mainstream.

The Maoists and the government have vowed to complete the integration process within six months, but differences remain about how that is to be achieved. The army is reportedly against the enrolment of "politically indoctrinated" cadres.

"We still need the U.N. to monitor the Maoist combatants and their weapons," Peace and Reconstruction Minister Ram Chandra Poudel said.

The U.N. was asked to monitor the peace process and assist in the key elections for a constituent assembly held in April. The U.N. mission's term ends on July 22.

"A formal letter will be sent to the U.N. shortly requesting a six-month extension of its mission," Poudel said.

He said the size of the mission would be reduced because the elections are over. (Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee and Jerry Norton) (For the latest Reuters news on Nepal see: http://in.reuters.com, for blogs see http://blogs.reuters.com/in/)

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