Kathmandu, September 17, 2007

The marathon meeting held today between Maoist chairman Prachanda and his deputy Dr Baburam Bhattarai and Nepali Congress leader and Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s close aide Dr Skekhar Koirala did not make any headway, as both the sides stuck to their stance regarding the issue of a republic and election system.

The day-long meeting, held at Prachanda’s Naya Bazaarbased residence, had focused on finding a common ground to the two key issues.

Through their 22-point charter agenda, the Maoists have been insisting on declaring the country a republic through the interim parliament, while the NC and other constituents of the seven-party alliance stress on the interim constitution which states that the future of monarchy would be decided by a simple majority of the first meeting of the constituent assembly.

Commenting on the meeting with Sitaula and Dr Koirala, who represented the PM, Maoist leader Dr Bhattarai said: “They insisted on us giving up our agenda, but we did not accept it. Let us see what happens till tomorrow morning when we and the PM meet.

If nothing positive comes out of tomorrow’s meeting, we will declare withdrawal from the interim government and announce agitation programme in tomorrow’s public meeting.” He said they were not optimistic of any positive development in tomorrow’s meeting with the PM.

Dr Bhattarai said the need of the hour was to “legally” and “politically” abolish the monarchy to ensure true assembly polls.

PM urged to ensure security for CA polls

Kathmandu, September 17, 2007

Chief Election Commissioner Bhoj Raj Pokhrel today requested Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala to make adequate security arrangements for the upcoming elections to the Constituent Assembly(CA).

The commissioners also asked the government  to give special attention in implementing Code of Conduct for the CA polls, which is to be implemented from Tuesday. They apprised Koirala of the current status of the preparation of elections, and also asked all the government agencies to give high priority to the election-related work.

“Stating that the CA elections are an important issue, Prime Minister Koirala told the top Election Commission (EC) officials that he and the interim government were committed to assisting in whatever ways possible for holding the elections on time,” the EC said.

The EC today published the programme for the polls to be held under the proportional representation system.

According to the programme, the political parties are required to submit the closed-list of their candidates to be elected under the proportional representation system on September 30.