UN: Clock is ticking for Nepal with unsettled problems with Maoists

Dec 30, 2010, 18:59 GMT

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged Nepalese parties to seek a compromise to their problems or face a fresh conflict as the UN prepares to withdraw from the country.

The UN mission in Nepal (UNMIN) is set to leave on January 15 while a major programme to integrate some 19,000 former Maoist combatants is not yet completed. The Maoists had fought against the government in the Himalayan kingdom for more than a decade.

'Rapid steps are needed to secure the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist army personnel in a mutually acceptable manner, which the United Nations would have liked to see prior to the departure of UNMIN in order to avoid any vacuum,' Ban said in a new report to the UN Security Council.

UNMIN was dispatched in 2007 to assist the coalition government composed mainly of the government in Katmandu and the Communist Party of Nepal, who are Maoists, to settle their conflict, including the disarmament and integration of militant Maoists into society. Nepal is scheduled to promulgate a new constitution on May 28.

Ban said Nepal's political deadlock between the two major parties has hampered the completion of the peace process, which they agreed to settle before the January 15 departure of the UN mission.

He warned that the deadlock 'holds the seed of fresh confrontation.'

'The parties can and must find a way out of this situation,' he said in the report.

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