Kathmandu, October 26, 2007

It was the national reconciliation day of the Nepali Congress and it organised a tea-party like before to mark it.

But, the two separate incidents that marked the day, indicated, if anything, an abundance of political discord. The Maoist brass stayed away from the tea party and the king visited the Nava Durga temple oneand-a-half hours after the PM, and people shouted anti-PM slogans.

Though his cultural rights are curtailed after Jana Andolan II, king Gyanendra followed PM GP Koirala, who is currently the head of state, to the Nava Durga Temple at Bhaktapur.

The king did it for the third time after the Jana Andolan-II. Earlier, the king had followed the PM and visited Kumari Temple and Dashain Ghar. The king visited the temple at around 5:30 pm, almost 90 minutes after the PM, and stayed there for 20 minutes. In the same way as during Kumari Jatra, Fulpati celebration and visit to the temple of Taleju, he maintained his presence in the temple unaffected by protest, along with his palace entourage.

This visit was pre-scheduled. To observe Kojagrat Purnima, the PM visited the Nava Durga Temple at around 4 pm. Traditionally, the king as the head of state used to visit the temple on the day of Kojagrat Purnima. During the PM’s visit to the temple, a group of people in support of the king shouted slogans against the PM.

The police arrested some of those people. An assistant sub-inspector of the APF was hurt when demonstrators shouting slogans against the PM pelted him with stones.

Martin briefs UNSC on Nepal

Associated Press

United Nations, October 26, 2007

The UN’s top envoy in Nepal has briefed the UN Security Council on an increasingly “volatile” security situation in Nepal.

Ian Martin yesterday presented Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s recent report, which describes Nepal’s peace process as “facing serious difficulties” despite some progress made by the government and Maoists. “The peace process in Nepal is facing its most difficult challenges to date,” said the report released earlier this week. “The overall security environment has become more volatile and can be expected to remain so, or to become increasingly troubled, in the coming weeks,” the report said.

Following the council briefing, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that election is a key part of the process for “normalising” the situation in Nepal. “We expressed disappointment, like a number of other colleagues, with regard to the postponement of the assembly elections and called on the government to set up a date promptly for the elections, taking into account the requirements for a free, fair and credible election to take place,” he said.

The report said the election date had already been in doubt because of a “lack of unity and political consensus” among the eight parties that formed the interim government.