MAHENDRANAGAR, March 20: Senior CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal said on Friday that the mainstream political parties made a serious mistake by involving armed Maoists in the poll fray last year. The former general secretary of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) told journalists that handing over the reins of power to the former rebels was even a graver mistake. [break]
"It was a big mistake bringing in Maoists, who still have parallel army structure, to government," said Nepal, who is also the chair of the most important Constitutional Committee of the Constituent Assembly, adding that the nation is headed for a catastrophe, thanks to Maoists´ blunders.
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The leader of the second largest ruling party also said the Maoists´ failure to extend the tenure of eight Nepal Army (NA) generals was the last in a series of their mistakes.
The ruling Maoists being at odds with the state army has given rise to suspicion against them, said Nepal. "The Maoists never considered the Nepal Army as their army," the UML leader said, accusing the Maoists of plotting to wreck the NA structures. He also claimed that military ideology is gaining upper hand in the Maoist minds.
He however sounded optimistic about getting the new constitution ready on time – by May 2010.
