POLITICS-NEPAL: Clouds of Mistrust Hang over Peace Talks

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Analysis - By Suman Pradhan

KATHMANDU, Jul 21 2003 (IPS) - Nearly two and a half months since the Nepal government and Maoist rebels declared ”small but significant progress” in their talks, the peace process remains in tatters and clouds of mistrust hang over the two sides.

Nearly two and a half months since the Nepal government and Maoist rebels declared ”small but significant progress” in their talks, the peace process remains in tatters and clouds of mistrust hang over the two sides.

The resulting bad blood between the two negotiating panels, which stem from unfulfilled promises in the May round of talks, has virtually stalled the peace negotiations indefinitely. The situation has become one of ”no war, no peace”, as the headline of an article in the English-language daily ‘Nepali Times’ put it.

Now, the stakes are being pushed higher still as both sides begin to posture to force the other to make concessions.

The latest came on Sunday when the rebels closed down their so-called ‘Contact Office’ in the capital. Maoist functionary Bharat Dhungana, who was running the office, said that it was being closed indefinitely for "security concerns”.

His action followed just days after the top Maoist negotiators, including charismatic rebel chief negotiator Dr Baburam Bhattarai, left the capital one by one for unknown destinations.

Once out in the open and behaving like a normal political party, the rebels have now all but vanished from Kathmandu.

In Nepal’s capital today, there is a general sense of foreboding. "We only hope that the peace process is back on track soon. Violence is not good for the country," a worried Sriram Acharya, a schoolteacher, said.

But most believe the peace talks are unlikely to recover until the government makes some dramatic concessions.

"This (closing of the Maoist office) is a slap in the face of the government by the Maoists to extract some heavy concessions," says Hari Bahadur Thapa, a political analyst who has keenly followed the Maoists’ ‘People’s War’ since it began in early 1996. "But it could also very well be the end of talks for now."

Much of the goodwill has declined since May 9, just after the second round of peace talks in Kathmandu, when both the Nepal government and Maoist rebels publicly said the government had agreed to release five jailed senior Maoist leaders.

More importantly, they said the government had agreed to limit army patrols to within five kilometres of the barracks in the districts to minimise chances of confrontation with rebel forces.

But today, the government has yet to release three of the five jailed rebels it promised, and has also not enforced the five-kilometre patrol rule.

Whatever the peace talks eventually lead to, it was not supposed to be like this.

Emerging in 1996 with a call to overthrow Nepal’s monarchy and establish a republican state, the Maoists, who idolise Peru’s Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path guerrillas, declared a ceasefire with the government in January this year and began peace negotiations in April. Nearly 8, 000 people have died in the insurgency so far.

After starting talks, the government and the Maoists quickly hammered out a code of conduct to govern negotiations. The atmosphere became so conducive to them that the rebel leadership, long since underground and hiding in the jungles of western Nepal where they have formed a "base area", began emerging in public.

They behaved as any normal politician, pressing flesh and making public speeches. But the differences after the second round in May, especially on the army patrol agreement, soured the mood.

It will be difficult for the government to enforce the second- round agreement without first taking into account the powerful Royal Nepal Army, which immediately voiced its displeasure to the agreement as soon as it was announced.

The army backlash to the May concessions given by the government was so strong that Nepal’s monarch King Gyanendra forced then Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand to resign in early June. He then picked former Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa to lead the government.

Chand’s ouster did not help matters since along with him went his negotiating team, taking away the personal chemistry and bond which some negotiators, particularly Minister Narayan Singh Pun, had developed with the rebel leadership.

Thapa brought in two new negotiators who had publicly opposed the second round agreements – Finance Minister Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani and Minister for Information and Communication Kamal Thapa.

But the damage was already done. Despite six rounds of both informal and secret talks to break the stalemate, the two sides still could not agree on the second-round agreement.

Sources both in the government and Maoist sides say that while the rebels wanted the government to abide by the second-round agreement, the former wanted to renegotiate it. The differences have kept the two sides from announcing dates for the official third round of talks.

Last week, the Maoists bluntly threatened to pull out of the talks if the government did not make its position clear.

Ram Bahadur Thapa, a senior Maoist leader and one of their negotiators, said just before he left Kathmandu that his group would take stock of the situation. He then said "there will be war" if the government moves ahead with proposed plans to call elections rather than negotiating with the Maoists for a political solution.

In the face of such threats, the government blinked. Information Minister Kamal Thapa issued a formal letter to the Maoists late last week, inviting them to sit down for the third round of talks. But the letter ignored the Maoists’ queries of whether the second round agreements would be enforced.

The rebels have yet to respond to the letter. No one seems to know where they are, though there is much speculation here that the Maoist leadership is holding a top secret meeting in the jungles to draft a formal response to the government invitation.

As the silence from the Maoists continues, the government appears to be in a more flexible mood. Minister Thapa publicly said on Saturday that the government "would implement the second round agreement and even release the three jailed Maoist leaders if the Maoists sit for the third round”.

Still, there is silence from the rebel side. Nepalis can only hope, this is not the silence before the storm.