Issuing a clarification in response to the overgrowing concerns and controversies in the media at home and abroad over UNMIN´s role in the registration and verification of the Maoist combatants, the mission said there were only two conditions for eligibility: birth before May 25, 1988 and joining Maoist army before May 25, 2006.
The statement also said UNMIN was not requested to verify whether the registered Maoist combatants were eligible for integration in the security forces. This issue was to be considered by the inter-party Special Committee to supervise, integrate and rehabilitate Maoist army.
Stating UNMIN´s task during the registration, the statement added that UN teams collected personal military information and examined identity cards. This process began on January 17, 2007 and the results were reported to the Joint Monitoring Coordination Committee (JMCC) in February.
As for the verification, the UN teams conducted the verification between June and December 2007. The UN team verified the eligibility of the registrants through detailed individual interviews conducted in confidence. The team referred cases raising any doubts for higher-level review, the statement said.
UNMIN also pointed that the representatives of political parties represented in the then seven-party alliance inspected the verification process in one cantonment.
The process disqualified 2,973 stating them as minors. Altogether 1,035 persons were disqualified as having been recruited after May 25, 2006. A total of 8,640 registered individuals did not present themselves for the verification process and were thus disqualified. The number of verified Maoist army personnel was 19,602.
Meanwhile, Nepali Congress delegates met with UNMIN chief Karin Landgren and expressed dissatisfaction over the registration and verification process. After the meeting, Landgren told reporters that UNMIN carried out “serious and rigorous exercise” during the verification process and “it did a good job.” She urged the NC and other political parties to move toward “finding solution” to the present political problem.
Israel questions Martin´s credentials
Meanwhile, following the release of the controversial videotape, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that if Ian Martin, the then Head of the UN Mission in Nepal, was fooled by terrorists in Nepal, he could easily have been fooled in the Gaza Strip as well, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Martin was the head of a UN board of inquiry that last week issued a damning report of Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip, saying that Israel shelled six UN installations. "These allegations cast a long shadow over the Gaza board of inquiry´s reliability," the Post quoted the Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor as saying on Tuesday.
Another diplomatic source said the Nepal example "shows the inadequacy of someone who has to deal with real life, and approaches the facts with incredible innocence."
The source said that if Martin failed to get the facts right when dealing with terrorists in Nepal, who can believe he got it right in Gaza, where he was also dealing with terrorists.
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