“As I said in my letter to the Prime Minister and Chairman Prachanda on the 13th of December, if the parties cannot come to agreement on future monitoring arrangements by the end of the mandate, UNMIN will have no choice but to remove the valuable monitoring equipment and bring it back here. That´s in line with standard UN operating procedures,” said outgoing UNMIN chief Karin Landgren at a press conference at UNMIN headquarters in Kathmandu on Monday. [break]
The government has already made two written requests to UNMIN to transfer the monitoring equipment and logistics to the Special Committee for Integration and Rehabilitation of Maoist Combatants after January 15. But UNMIN, while expressing willingness to loan them, has put the condition that such a request should be agreed between the government and the Maoists.
As its mandate is expiring in the next four days, UNMIN has started withdrawing its international arms monitors, Nepali support staff and interpreters from Maoist cantonments since last Thursday, leaving minimum staff back in the field till midnight of January 15.
To another query whether UNMIN will hand over Maoist arms to the government while leaving, she said, UNMIN would not do any handover of the arms as they always belonged to the Nepal Army and the Maoist army.
Asked about possible technical rollover if a consensus monitoring mechanism does not come into place by January 15, she said, “The decision on UNMIN´s mandate and UNMIN´s continuation is not taken single-handedly by the Security Council. They would be looking to a request from the parties, if any, which I am sure they will be guided by.” She said the Council is expected to meet to adopt a resolution on January 14. She said senior UN official Samuel Tamrat is coming to Nepal to mark the closing of the mission.
I was misrepresented
Landgren, who is under fire from the president and the government for her mentioning fears among people of a Maoist revolt, the president seizing power or an army-backed coup, in her briefing to the Security Council, said she was misinterpreted.
- UNMIN doesn´t need to hand over arms
- Security Council meeting on Jan 14 for resolution on Nepal
- Tamart coming to mark closure of mission
“Before I take your questions, let me address a single sentence in my briefing that has been misrepresented in some reports,” she told media in a statement before the press conference.
She added, “The passage in question, which was a normal part of my political reporting to the Security Council, recounted that many Nepalis had at times had fears of specific scenarios. This is a factual statement about local perceptions. These fears have been shared with me, let me underline, and widely discussed, and I would have been remiss not to mention them. But they are not a UN warning or a UN assessment of risk. As you will note, I said that Nepal´s dramatic political gains were not likely to be reversed.”
In her last briefing to the Security Council last Wednesday, she had said, “While Nepal´s dramatic political gains are not likely to be reversed, the risks have clearly grown. There have at times been fears among many Nepalis over the prospect of a people´s revolt which remains an explicit Maoist threat; of the President stepping in, as recently called for by the Vice-President, should the parties fail to find a way forward; or of an army-backed coup. Any such measures would sorely threaten peace and Nepal´s fragile democracy.”
When a journalist posed a question on her controversial statement, she asked to read the text of her briefing in entirety, saying she stands by what she said. “I really do encourage you to have another look at what I actually said. As far as that content is concerned, I have said all that I want.”
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