| NEWS |
Posted
on 13-Sep-01 10:41 AM
By South Asia correspondent Daniel Lak
Nepal's government is due to hold a second round of peace talks with Maoist rebels.
The first round was two weeks ago in Kathmandu.
The two sides have sharply divergent demands and it is hard to see where any common ground will lie.
The rebels have been fighting a five-year insurgency that has left more than 1,800 people dead.
Ceasefire
The most positive thing about these talks is that they are taking place at all.
The two sides will now meet closer to territory held by the rebels at a national park in the west of the country.
Just a few short months ago, the Maoists were massacring policemen and threatening the violent overthrow of the entire system in Nepal.
The rebels took up arms six years ago
Now government and rebel negotiators are meeting for a second time in two weeks and a ceasefire called by both sides is still holding.
Ministers accuse the Maoists of using the cessation in fighting to extort money and organize open political rallies that threaten public order.
One such rally is due in Kathmandu in a week's time - negotiators on the government side are going to ask their Maoist counterparts to call off the meeting.
Earlier, smaller gatherings of this sort elsewhere in the country have been occasions for the rebels to declare parallel governments.
Difficult road
Many here expect the peace talks to either break down or go on for quite some time with little obvious progress.
The search for common ground between positions that are currently mutually exclusive will not be easy.
The Maoists want an end to monarchy and a Communist republic.
The government says there can be no compromise on the current system of parliamentary democracy.
The alternative is more violence, which would be devastating in a desperately poor country that has already been through one of the worst years in recent history, with the massacre of most of its royal family in June and a steady decline in economic conditions.
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