क्रान्तीकारी नेपाल

INSN News Service
Rewati Sapkota
Kathmandu, 21 January 2007
A meeting between top leaders of the eight parties is going to be held on Monday at the prime ministers´s official residence in Kathmandu to seek a solution to the Terai violence which has been ongoing for a week. The eight parties have been building an alliance for democracy for some 14 months, to shape a new Nepal. They overthrew a dictatorial king’s regime and established a basis for democracy, and have laid plans to enact a new interim constitution and to conduct constituent assembly elections with in five months. The sense of most Nepalese is that, with this record of success, they should be able to solve the Terai violence at this moment.
The violence severely sparked in the Terai after the legislature promulgated the interim constitution. Some political commentators are hinting that it is a plan among some elements of royalists and Indian and Nepalese Hindu nationalists who are not happy with the enactment of the Nepal´s new constitution, possibly enjoying either tacit or explicit US support.
After the 10 years of violence, Nepal is moving toward peace. The sense on the street and the path is that interest groups who have been committing violence in the Terai have raised some genuine issues that the political parties should take up for the benefit the people, but that more violence is not what Nepal needs now. Dialogue among the interest groups and the political parties is necessary, and perhaps the urgent meeting on Monday will be a first step toward stabilizing the peace.