(Adds U.N. comments)

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU, July 16 (Reuters) - Nepal's former Maoist rebels have been formally registered as a political party to contest November elections in the Himalayan country, the Election Commission said on Monday.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has been allocated the hammer and sickle symbol to fight the Nov. 22 elections that will elect a constituent assembly to decide the fate of the monarchy in Nepal and the country's political future.

As in many countries, pictorial symbols are allocated to political parties so they are easily identified by illiterate voters. About 46 percent of Nepal's 26.4 million people are illiterate.

"They (the Maoists) have now become just like any other political party for the purpose of the election," Election Commission spokesman Laxman Bhattarai said.

The rebels, who still feature on a U.S. list of "terrorist" organisations, have confined thousands of their former fighters to camps and locked about 3,500 weapons in metal containers monitored by the United Nations as part of a peace deal.

But the Maoists were criticised by the U.N. on Monday for blocking international monitors from verifying if their ranks in the camps included children or recruits who joined after the peace process began last year.

In June U.N. monitors visited one camp and found child soldiers as well as new recruits -- not allowed under the terms of the peace deal -- but they have since been prevented from visiting the other main camps.

Ian Martin, special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said the Maoists were demanding talks with the government on payment for their soldiers and on integration into the state army before registration could proceed.

"However the important issue of security sector reform is primarily relevant to the future of those who remain in the cantonments after verification; it should not be a pre-condition to verification itself," Martin told reporters.

Martin said this was a "serious" concern and urged the governing alliance, which includes the Maoists, to allow U.N. monitors to carry out the verification as soon as possible.

"The international community expects in particular that those who have been found to be under 18 on the relevant date must be discharged promptly," he said.

The Maoists fought a civil war to topple the monarchy from 1996, in a conflict which killed more than 13,000 people before a peace deal was signed last November.

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