KATHMANDU, Jan 17: United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Nepal Ian Martin has warned the UN Security Council that controversies between Nepal Army (NA) and Maoist’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and other problems may cause difficulties ahead.
According to the UN New Center, Martin, giving his last presentation to the Council in his current position in New York on Friday, said, the original agreements regarding the armies must be maintained “if a critical post-conflict challenge is to be successfully overcome and a stable peace is to be achieved and sustained.”
“I fear that there is now a danger that these fundamentals are being challenged and eroded,” he said.
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He stressed that one need for change to which no political party and neither army was yet truly committed was the need to end impunity, noting that not a single perpetrator of a major human rights violation, whether committed during the armed conflict or after, had been properly brought to justice during this period. [break]
Although the parties committed in 2006 to investigate disappearances, only now is Parliament about to consider legislation to set up a commission to do so.
“The weakness of the peace process has been the failure to implement commitments made,” Martin said, adding, “The need now is therefore not only for a renewed basis of understanding and cooperation, but also for a continuous mechanism for ensuring such implementation.”
The UN News said under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2006, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) “committed itself to democratic norms and values, including the competitive multi-party system of government, fundamental human rights, civil liberties, press freedom and rule of law" and the parties elected to the 1999 parliament committed themselves "to the election of a constituent assembly, the restructuring of the state and progressive socio-economic change".
Both sides also agreed that the Maoist army personnel were to be “integrated and rehabilitated"; and the Nepal Army was to be “democratized".
However, there is recent controversy, which is of "particular concern to UNMIN", over recruitment by the Nepal Army and its recognition of authority of the elected Maoist-led Government, with the army arguing that it should be allowed to fill vacancies.
Martin also told the Council that the Maoist army was the first to breach the arms agreement "by bringing thousands of new recruits, many of them minors", into their cantonments. "They eventually either left the cantonments or were disqualified by UNMIN’s verification, although as the report of the Secretary-General emphasizes yet again, the discharge of those disqualified who remain in the cantonments is long overdue," he said, arguing that "recruiting additional armed forces” is prohibited unless mutually agreed by the parties should thus be understood to apply to any recruitment, including the filling of vacancies.
