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| Kathmandu, Wednesday March 12, 2003 Falgun 28, 2059. |
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Left parties, Maoists ready for united
agitation
By Ghanashyam Ojha
KATHMANDU, March 11 : Eleven left parties including the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) today agreed to launch a movement against the October 4
royal take over after a joint meeting.
In the first ever meeting with the ten left
parties, Maoist leader Dinanath Sharma said that his party would cooperate with all the
left political parties in their "united move against the king’s "regressive
step".
Sharma also urged the left parties to
persuade the Nepali Congress and other political parties to extend support and solidarity
to the movement. However, he did not divulge on the modality of the peaceful agitation
that would be jointly carried out by the parties.
"We will sit for another round of
meeting in order to thrash out the modality of the movement," Maoist leader Sharma
told the journalists after the meeting. "But the peaceful movement will help in
executing the peace negotiation."
Sharma also termed the current Lokendra
Bahadur Chand government as illegitimate and said that the Maoists were initiating peace
process not with this government but with the state. "It’s the talks between two
regimes," Sharma said.
The meeting was attended by the CPN-UML, the
CPN-Maoist, the CPN-ML (Restructured), the CPN-Unity Centre, the CPN-United, the CPN-MLM,
Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (NWPP), the CPN-Marxist, Nepal Samyabadi-MLM,
Peoples’ Front Nepal (PFN) and Socialist Revolution Nepal.
"All left parties including the Maoists
showed their commitment to jointly protest against the regressive move of October 4,"
Bharat Mohan Adhikari, the UML standing committee member, said of the meeting.
He said that the left parties expressed their
commitment to protect the achievements of the 1990 Peoples’ Movement. They also
decided to be united so as to restore the peoples’ sovereignty seized by the royal
move.
Adhikari said that the Maoists declared the
cease-fire in order to stop regressive steps.
For his part, Sharma reiterated his
commitment to move ahead with better coordination with all the political parties.
"We will work together with all the
political parties in the peace process," Sharma said.
He also rejected reports that the
announcement of the cease-fire followed a secret meeting between the Maoist leaders and
the King. He also made it clear that the Maoists had not backtracked from their demand for
a republic.
Talking about the delayed peace process,
Sharma said that the Maoists were ready to hold negotiations with the ‘state’
anytime.
"I am hopeful that the talks will begin
soon," Sharma said. "But I don’t know why the process has been
delayed."
C P Mainali, Co-ordinator of the CPN-ML
(Restructured), said that the Maoist leader assured all left political parties that the
Maoists would move with better reconciliation with all the political parties.
Mainali quoted Sharma as saying, "We
never wanted to bypass the political parties."
He also claimed that the King had to bow down
to the united demand of all left and democratic parties.
According to one of the left leaders, Sharma
said that the united movement of all political parties could bring even the King to a
proper ‘size’. "We are now more powerful to launch a united agitation as we
have also our militants," the left leader quoted Sharma as saying.
Sharma also urged the leaders of the left
parties that the peoples’ militants belonged to all political parties and the people,
which could be of great help in the united agitation against the King’s regressive
act.
The meeting also agreed to call such meetings soon in order
to explore the modality of the peaceful movement against the regressive act, a press
statement issued by the UML after the meeting said.
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