A meeting of the Special Committee decided late Friday evening to deploy 16 members each from the Nepal Army (NA), Nepal Police (NP), the Armed Police Force (APF) and the People´s Liberation Army (PLA) at the seven main Maoist cantonments and the Chhauni barracks of the Nepal Army, said Madhav Prasad Ghimire, chief secretary and spokesperson of the committee. [break]
Maoist representative on the Special Committee Barsha Man Pun said that each cantonment will have an eight-member monitoring team -- two each from NA, NP, APF and PLA -- to take charge of the monitoring role after UNMIN monitors leave the cantonments at midnight, January 15.
Pun said that this arrangement would be in place for the time being only. “We will work out another mechanism later,” he said after the meeting.
The meeting also decided to request UNMIN to hand over monitoring equipment to the Special Committee, besides passing a vote of thanks to UNMIN for supporting the peace process for four years.
“The government is writing to UNMIN to this effect Saturday morning,” said the chief secretary after the meeting.
Earlier in the afternoon, the government and the UCPN (Maoist) agreed to form a six-member joint mechanism to monitor the management of arms and armies of both the government and the Maoists, maintain an environment of trust, and resolve disputes that surface between the two sides after UNMIN´s departure Saturday.
The mechanism will comprise three members each from the Special Committee for Supervision, Integration and Rehabilitation of Maoist Combatants and the Secretariat under it.
In the three-point agreement reached during a meeting held on Friday, the government and the Maoists agreed to immediately deploy a separate joint team with necessary human resources to monitor the management of arms and armies of both the Nepal Army and the Maoist army. The joint team will monitor arms kept in seven containers in various Maoist cantonments and one container of the Nepal Army at Chhauni, Kathmandu.
According to Maoist army in-charge Barsha Man Pun, both sides have agreed to bring about amendments accordingly in all agreements and understandings reached in the past, in order to bring the new agreement into implementation. “The mechanism under the Special Committee will do all the work that was being done by UNMIN so far,” he said.
According to the agreement undersigned jointly by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the two sides have agreed to turn over to the Special Committee all responsibilities including the monitoring of arms of the Maoists and the Nepal Army kept in containers and other arms kept outside for the personal security of Maoist leaders.
While Prime Minister Nepal and Home Minister Bhim Rawal attended the meeting on behalf of the government, Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Vice-chairman Mohan Baidya and Maoist army in-charge Barsha Man Pun sat on the meeting, held at Radisson Hotel, on behalf of the Maoists.
Talking to media afterwards, Home Minister Rawal said both sides acknowledged the importance of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) reached on November 21, 2006, the Agreement on Monitoring of the Management of Arms and Armies (AMMAA) reached on December 8, 2006 and subsequent agreements to expedite the peace process, and reaffirmed their commitment to abide by all the agreements. The government and the Maoists have also agreed to move ahead, taking necessary decisions to see the ongoing peace process to a logical conclusion.
During the meeting, the government and the Maoists also reached an agreement to write to the UN to formally hand over to the Nepal government equipment being used by UNMIN to monitor arms and armies. They also decided to thank UNMIN for its role in monitoring the management of arms and armies to bring the peace process to this stage.
The government and the Maoists had formalized the agreement, reached at a meeting held in the morning, during the second round meeting held in the evening. During the morning meeting, both the government and the Maoists had agreed to abide by all agreements on the peace process reached in the past and form a separate joint mechanism to monitor the arms and armies of both the government and Maoists.
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