Nepal’s opposition Maoists have called off a blockade of the country’s main airport after coming under international pressure over the planned protest, a party spokesman said yesterday.
Envoys from the United States, Russia and the European Union had on Tuesday urged Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal to call off the airport shutdown, saying it would escalate tensions and harm tourism during the peak season.
“The international community asked our party to withhold this programme so we respected their request,” Maoist spokesman Dinanath Sharma told AFP.
Nepal’s army and police have been placed on high alert after the Maoists last week announced a fortnight of nationwide demonstrations aimed at destabilising the new coalition government.
The former rebels, who fought a 10-year civil war against the state before winning 2008 elections, quit the government in May after a row with the president over the country’s army chief.
They now want the president to apologise for blocking Dahal’s attempt to sack the head of the army and have vowed to bring the capital Kathmandu to a standstill on November 10 unless their demands are met.
Meanwhile, at least a dozen people were injured in clashes with security forces in eastern Nepal and curfew was clamped in another area in the region as the former Maoist guerrillas yesterday stepped up their protests against the coalition government, amidst fears by the western governments that it would lead to violence and escalated tension.
The renewed protests called by the former insurgents since Sunday night turned violent in Sunsari district in the Terai plains as demonstrators fought with riot police, who were deployed in large numbers throughout the country to prevent violence.
According to initial reports, eight Maoist protesters and four policemen were hurt in the Sunsari clash while Dhankuta, a hilly district in the east, remained under indefinite curfew for the second day.
Dhankuta was the scene of a violent confrontation between the Maoists and the ruling Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) on Tuesday with the youth wing of the rebels setting UML supporters’ vehicles on fire and the latter retaliating by attacking Maoist offices.
With an indefinite curfew enforced by the district administration on one hand and the UML calling an indefinite shutdown, tension continued to simmer in the district.
However, the government indicated it was optimistic about containing the protests that are scheduled to continue till November 13.
Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal called an emergency meeting of the cabinet yesterday following which the council of ministers expressed hope that the protests would remain non-violent.
The new confidence came after a surprise meeting between the top Maoist leaders and representatives of the ruling parties at former UML deputy prime minister K P Oli’s residence on Tuesday night.
Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, who is also the spokesman of the current government, told the media after the cabinet meeting that informal talks had resumed with the ex-insurgents.
The reconciliatory attitude of the Maoists was also partly due to the meeting their chief and former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda had with the envoys of 12 western governments on Tuesday.
However, as a precautionary measure, the security agencies, including the army, were ordered to be on high alert while hundreds of armed policemen were deployed around government offices yesterday, when the Maoists began a picket of district administration centres. AFP/IANS
|
