Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal said the party would reject outright the proposal to extend the CA term as long as the present government is given continuity. [break]
He condemned remarks by Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML leaders who have blamed the Maoists for delaying in constitution-writing and peace processes.
"Accusations against us are entirely baseless. We are the ones who fought for CA," Dahal said at a press meet organized to make public the decisions of the party´s politburo meeting that concluded Friday. He argued that leaders from other parties were spreading rumors against the Maoist party to cover up their own inefficiency and mistakes.
U-turn on no-confidence motion
The largest party, which has remained in the opposition for nearly a year, has aborted its campaign to register no-confidence motion against the government. Last month the party had initiated a signature campaign aimed at toppling the government.
The politburo instead took a U-turn as it decided to intensify agitation against the government starting April 22. "We opted to pile pressure on the present coalition by intensifying protests instead of resorting to the dirty game of numbers [302] to topple the government," he claimed.
Dahal also claimed that the Maoist party was for integrating all the cantoned combatants into national security agencies. He argued that all the combatants who are presently staying in the cantonments are qualified and they deserve integration because those disqualified have already been discharged.
Of the total over 19,000 Maoist fighters, over 4,000 have been discharged as they disqualified in UN verification.
The Maoist response came some hours after Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal tabled a proposal to integrate 3,000 combatants or to adopt the one-weapon-one-fighter principle at a meeting of top leaders from six major political parties, but not the UCPN (Maoist). There are 3,475 Maoist weapons registered by the UNMIN.
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