Baburam throws another salvo against Prachanda statement
Intra-party dispute in the CPN (Maoist) seems far from over. In a statement Wednesday, senior Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattrai, who is said to have been facing party action, snubbed party supremo Prachanda’s audiotape - founded and released by the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) last week - in which he indirectly described Bhattrai as being ‘pro-Indian’.
Though, like Prachanda, Bhattrai termed the release of the tape as a conspiracy theory, he raised serious objection over Prachanda’s statement that Indian ruling front sought Bhattrai’s reinstatement in the party post as a condition for the release of two senior Maoist leaders, Mohan Baidya alias Kiran and CP Gajurel ‘Gaurab’, who have been languishing in Indian jails for quite sometime.
“To try to present somebody as a stooge of foreigners just because of ideological, political difference is height of political degeneration,” he said, adding, “It will be a grand deceit if anybody tries to present me against Comrade Kiran and Comrade Gaurab against the fact that I, as then head of the Foreign Department [of the party], took all kinds of diplomatic initiatives for their release,” the Maoist leader said in his statement.
According to Bhattrai, the audiotape in which Prachanda ‘tried to accuse’ him to be pro-Indian was “completely unfounded, misleading and intended at character assassination”. Citing the party chairman’s recent press statement that some issues regarding the action against him had been proven wrong with the passage of time, Bhattrai said he had already asked the party headquarters to investigate over the entire affair and bring the truth to public.
Bhattrai claimed he was toeing the party’s official line that the conflict with Nepal’s monarchy is of primary importance [than Indian expansionism] and he firmly believed in that. “If anybody accuses me as being pro-Indian on that basis, the accuser can rather be called pro-King,” he protested and claimed that he was a nationalist “who saw no possibility of overall good of the nation without restructuring all the unequal treaties between Nepal and India since the Sugauli Treaty”.
He also said he was concerned about the ‘sensational’ report in Wednesday’s Times of India, Indian English daily, which exposed his meeting with CPI (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat and others in New Delhi. The report, he insisted, was baseless and ill-intended against his party and its movement.
Bhattrai however admitted to be in contact with various political forces and the international community as per the responsibility given by the party but insisted that the reports linking him with Indian intelligence agency were part of a conspiracy to defame him. nepalnews.com mbk May 26 05
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