Kathmandu, December 17:

A close aide to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala said today that the PM can accomplish jobs of the head of the state and head of the government in the interim period “only if he rises above partisan interests”.

Speaking at the Reporters’ Club, Dr Shekhar Koirala said: “The PM has to take the responsibility of head of the state, as the interim constitution has striped the king of all powers.” He said the interim statute will come into force once the monitoring and managing of Maoists’ arms starts. “This provision has been included in the Annex of the constitution as people are still scared of the Maoists’ arms,” he said.

He added that the parties in conflict are looking for an alternative arrangement of monitoring and managing of the arms in case arrival of the UN monitoring team is delayed. “A few UN monitors (35) will arrive by December 28 but the number is not adequate to do the job,” Koirala said, adding that they had proposed Ian Martin, personal representative of the UN Secretary General, to recruit ex-British and Indian Gurkha servicemen temporarily for the observation, registration, verification, tagging and storing of the arms.

“The government has assured Martin of providing logistics support, clothes, vehicles and salary to the ex-British and Indian Gurkha servicemen taking care of initial management of arms,” he said.

Koirala said that the parties were also considering inviting at least 10 experts each from the European and Scandinavian countries to meet the stop-over-gap.

Terming the interim constitution as an ‘achievement of the people’s mandate’, vice-president of the Nepal Sadbhavana Party (Anandi Devi) Bharat Bimal Yadav expressed his party’s reservation that the constitution was silent on federalism and delimitation of constituencies based on population distribution.

Former SC judge Laxman Prasad Aryal said the hallmark of the interim statute was that it has incorporated the rights to education, health and employment as fundamental ones. Nepal Bar Association president Shambhu Thapa, however, said it was a constitution based on ‘political whip, not based on constitutional whip’. Former NBA president Radheshyam Adhikari said political tolerance is required to make the interim constitution functional.