Kathmandu, August 26 :

Leaders of the seven-party alliance (SPA) and the CPN (Maoist) would iron out their differences on all political issues that could not be settled by the Interim Constitution Drafting Committee (ICDC), leaders of the CPN-UML and the Nepali Congress, Bharat Mohan Adhikari and Bhim Bahadur Tamang, said here today. The ICDC had submitted its draft of the interim constitution yesterday. Said Adhikari: “The ICDC has accomplished three-fourth of the job as far as drafting the interim constitution is concerned. The political parties will do the rest of the job.”

“The draft has brought the SPA and the Maoists closer. The only thing still persisting is the mistrust existing between the two sides,” said Adhikari at a programme organised at the Reporters’ Club. “Mutual trust can be built only after the issue of arms management is settled amicably, which means that the Maoist guerrillas must be confined to cantonments and the Nepali Army must be made accountable to the government.”

The ICDC members could not reach a consensus on the draft of the interim statute as the major political parties were yet to agree on major political issues, he said.

The SPA and the CPN (Maoist) must reach a consensus on interim legislature, the monarchy, executive, judiciary, arms management and form and process of elections to a constituent assembly, he said. “It would be appropriate to resolve the issue of the monarchy through a referendum during the election to the constituent assembly.”

Even the Maoists, NC and the NC-D had recently agreed that the sovereign people should have the right to decide the fate of the monarchy through a referendum, a proposal put forth by the CPN-UML, he said.

Tamang conceded that there still existed a crisis of confidence between the parties and the Maoists though they had fought together against the King’s autocracy.

Terming monarchy a declining force, he said: “Nobody needs to worry about the monarchy.” Time is powerful and takes its own course, he said, reminding that the NC had decided to be impervious about the monarchy. He hoped that the SPA and the Maoist leaders would find solutions to all political issues.