“If the current situation persists, the country could face an accident. So we conclude that we should reach an agreement to resolve the problems in their entirety,” said Maoist Vice-chairman Narayankaji Shrestha after the HLPM meeting at Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala´s residence in Maharajgunj Thursday afternoon.[break]
After concluding the meeting, the leaders said the existing political problems cannot be resolved by just holding talks for one or two hours. “So the top leaders will sit for a whole day and come up with an agreement,” Shrestha said.
The agenda of the talks will be to draft the new constitution on time, take the peace process to its logical end and end the existing political deadlock, as agreed earlier at the January 5 meeting at Hotel Annapurna. The top leaders will take a decision to address the Maoist demand for power-sharing and the president´s “extra-constitutional” move to block the sacking of the then army chief Rookmangud Katawal through a joint resolution motion, besides tracing the root causes of distrust among the Maoist and non-Maoist parties. These talks agendas had been set during a three-party meeting at the Hotel Annapurna meeting.
The leaders also agreed to discuss the formation of a state restructuring commission, as provisioned in the interim constitution, to help the Constituent Assembly (CA) delineate the federal provinces in a rational manner.
Maoist leaders Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Shrestha and Dev Gurung, UML leaders Jhalanath Khanal, Bharatmohan Adhikari, Keshav Badal, KP Sharma Oli and Nepali Congress leaders Koirala, Ram Sharan Mahat and Ram Chandra Poudel were present at the meeting. “Even the government can be changed through constitutional ways,” said Oli, who has been publicly criticizing the formation of the HLPM. This was the first time that he attended HLPM meeting.
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