Leaders of various political parties discussed on Tuesday with Lakhdar Brahimi, the special adviser to UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the various approaches to resolving Nepal’s premier crisis. Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala told Brahimi that cooperation from the international community, including India, was essential to end the crisis. Koirala said nothing could be achieved without this cooperation, even if the three principal domestic forces — the King, the political parties and the Maoists — came together. This assessment departs from the public positions taken by successive governments as well as by some of the countries

critically important to Nepal, such as the US and India, which have stressed that the Nepalis are capable of handling the issue themselves.

However, Koirala has not given any idea of the nature and form of international role that he reckons as essential. Clarification is required and the local, national, regional and international implications of such a role, particularly of individual countries, should be extensively debated. It is not just the three domestic political forces that are everything, the general people who are the nation’s real and constant stakeholders should have a say in charting out their destiny. So it is time these forces explained their positions clearly, without vague and ambiguous abstractions, for the people’s benefit.

Seeking the help of individual countries, however, might have deeper and wider implications. It is not the same thing as the good offices of a neighbouring country sought in the resolution of bilateral matters, e.g. in the Bhutanese refugee imbroglio. But the risks would be minimal if the UN, of which Nepal is a member, was allowed to play a central role. Even the UN might not be able to play an effective role in the absence of the goodwill of such countries as India and the US. Making much of the internal nature of the problem is one thing, resolving it is quite another. The Nepalis have simply proved incapable of conflict resolution by themselves. So Koirala’s stress on international intervention must have resulted from his realisation of all the factors involved, though he himself, as the prime minister, had tried State force to quell the Maoist insurgency, but in vain.