Maoists kill 21 policemen in Nepal

KATHMANDU – A landmine planted by suspected Maoist rebels in Nepal killed 21 policemen and injured 16 others yesterday as a top guerrilla rejected calls by the prime minister to reopen peace talks.

The policemen were on a search mission for Maoist hideouts in the insurgency-torn south-western Nepalgunj district when their truck was blown up by underground explosives, police said. “The police opened fire after the blast but it is not known if any Maoists were killed.The Maoists disappeared after the attack,” senior police official Ravi Raj Thapa told AFP.He said 13 of the injured policemen were airlifted to a hospital in the capital Kathmandu, 440 kilometres away, where several were in serious condition.Three others were treated locally.It was the deadliest attack in Nepal since King Gyanendra on June 3 swore back in Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, whom he had fired two years earlier and replaced with a handpicked royalist government.Maoist second-in-command Baburam Bhattarai said the rebels, who are fighting to overthrow the monarchy, did not consider Deuba legitimate as he was chosen by the king.”The puppet Deuba government has been constituted to sabotage the movement for a people’s republic and we don’t see any possibility of dialogue with it,” Bhattarai told the pro-Maoist Nepali-language monthly Mulyankan.”A constituent assembly is our bottom line and we cannot accept anything less than that,” Bhattarai said.The demand for such an assembly, which would rewrite the constitution, helped scuttle two previous attempts to end the insurgency, including a round of peace talks led by Deuba’s government in 2001.The government expects the Maoists to use any constitutional assembly to press for the abolition of the monarchy.In his first national address since his reappointment, Deuba on June 9 appealed to the Maoists to come back to the peace table, promising “maximum flexibility” in negotiations.But there has been no indication he would accept a constituent assembly.The king had fired Deuba in 2002 accusing him of “incompetence” at fighting the Maoists, who have taken control of much of the countryside since declaring their “people’s war.”The civil war has claimed more than 9 500 lives since 1996 and devastated the Himalayan kingdom’s fragile tourism-dependent economy.King Gyanendra reappointed Deuba after months of street protests led by five opposition parties denouncing the king as an autocrat.The opposition has refused to join Deuba’s new government until the king explicitly renounces any role other than that of constitutional monarch.But Nepal’s mainstream communists Sunday broke with the opposition alliance and said they would support Deuba if he opened wide-ranging negotiations with the Maoists and brought the army, whose supreme commander is King Gyanendra, firmly under civilian control.The communists threw their support behind the Maoists’ demand for a constitutional assembly and offered to broker a deal to resume talks.- Nampa-AFP”The police opened fire after the blast but it is not known if any Maoists were killed.The Maoists disappeared after the attack,” senior police official Ravi Raj Thapa told AFP.He said 13 of the injured policemen were airlifted to a hospital in the capital Kathmandu, 440 kilometres away, where several were in serious condition.Three others were treated locally.It was the deadliest attack in Nepal since King Gyanendra on June 3 swore back in Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, whom he had fired two years earlier and replaced with a handpicked royalist government.Maoist second-in-command Baburam Bhattarai said the rebels, who are fighting to overthrow the monarchy, did not consider Deuba legitimate as he was chosen by the king.”The puppet Deuba government has been constituted to sabotage the movement for a people’s republic and we don’t see any possibility of dialogue with it,” Bhattarai told the pro-Maoist Nepali-language monthly Mulyankan.”A constituent assembly is our bottom line and we cannot accept anything less than that,” Bhattarai said.The demand for such an assembly, which would rewrite the constitution, helped scuttle two previous attempts to end the insurgency, including a round of peace talks led by Deuba’s government in 2001.The government expects the Maoists to use any constitutional assembly to press for the abolition of the monarchy.In his first national address since his reappointment, Deuba on June 9 appealed to the Maoists to come back to the peace table, promising “maximum flexibility” in negotiations.But there has been no indication he would accept a constituent assembly.The king had fired Deuba in 2002 accusing him of “incompetence” at fighting the Maoists, who have taken control of much of the countryside since declaring their “people’s war.”The civil war has claimed more than 9 500 lives since 1996 and devastated the Himalayan kingdom’s fragile tourism-dependent economy.King Gyanendra reappointed Deuba after months of street protests led by five opposition parties denouncing the king as an autocrat.The opposition has refused to join Deuba’s new government until the king explicitly renounces any role other than that of constitutional monarch.But Nepal’s mainstream communists Sunday broke with the opposition alliance and said they would support Deuba if he opened wide-ranging negotiations with the Maoists and brought the army, whose supreme commander is King Gyanendra, firmly under civilian control.The communists threw their support behind the Maoists’ demand for a constitutional assembly and offered to broker a deal to resume talks.- Nampa-AFP