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Maoists 'will meet Nepali king' | ||||
The leader of Nepal's former Maoist rebels says he wants to meet King Gyanendra in person to persuade him to step down. Maoist leader Prachanda said he would "take the initiative" in meeting the embattled monarch. The republican Maoists will be the biggest party in the country after elections to a constituent assembly last week. The Maoists declared an end to 10 years of insurgency in 2006.
'Leave voluntarily' "I will take the initiative to talk to the king in person," Prachanda said in an interview broadcast on state-run television, the AFP news agency reports.
"He should understand and respect the people's verdict and what the people want and leave the palace voluntarily. "In history, monarchs have been beheaded and also had to flee. Let that not be repeated in Nepal," Prachanda said.
Earlier this week, his deputy said that in the first meeting of the constituent assembly "we will declare the country a republic".
Final results for the elections may be released next week. The success of the former Maoists in the elections took observers by surprise. Latest results indicate that they will win around half of the 240 seats chosen on a first-past-the-post system. There are also 335 seats distributed by proportional representation. The Maoists are now unlikely to win enough of those seats to gain an overall majority, analysts say. A further 28 seats will be nominated by the government.
Earlier on Friday, a pro-monarchy politician, Rudra Bahadur Singh, was shot dead in southern Nepal by men who broke into his home, police say. The motive is not clear. Mr Singh failed to win a seat in last week's elections for the assembly that will decide Nepal's future. He stood as a candidate for the royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal, which campaigned to preserve the monarchy in the 10 April poll.
The US - which regards the Maoists as terrorists - has congratulated the Nepalese people for holding elections which it says were mostly peaceful. It said that it looked forward to an assembly that reflected the people's will. | ||||
