Indian killed in Bhutanese Maoist bomb blast

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 22 March: An Indian worker was killed was in south Bhutan this week in serial bomb blasts set off by Bhutanese Maoists in the south of the Buddhist Himalayan kingdom bordering, The Kathmandu Post reported Saturday from Kakadvitta in east Nepal.
More than 108,000 Bhutanese refugees live in seven UNHCR-administered camps in the region where inflows in from Bhutan where foreign reports aren’t based.
Bhutanee Maoists have started a people’s war to topple King Jigme Singhe Wangchuk.
Nineteen Bhutanese of Nepalese Hindu ethnicity have been arrested by the army after the bomb blasts that followed similar explosions in January.
Meanwhile, 60 more Bhutanese refugees arrived Friday in the Nepalese capital from east Nepalese capital en route to USA and Canada for resettlement.
The fist batch of 120 refugees left for USA and New Zealand after several western countries agreed to resettle refugees form the camps where they had been languishing for nearly 17 years.
Bhutan refused to take them back after expelling them forcibly.
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India’s main opposition backs monarchy

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 22 March: India’s prime minister-in-waiting and leader of the main opposition BJP Lal Krishna Advani said his party backs monarchy in Nepal being put to vote in a controversial vote in constituent assembly election 10 April.
Advani said his party backs the 238-year-old monarchy whatever the outcome of the first popular election in nine years.
“The framework of constitutional monarchy should be preserved, since it is a symbol of Nepal’s identity and sovereignty, in the same way as the as is the case in several other countries around the world,” Advani said in his autobiography entitled ‘ My Country, My Life’.
The book was released by former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam in New Delhi this week.
Ruling Congress and communist allies are working to topple King Gyanendra and monarchy by propping up Maoists even as the two ruling parties refuse to negotiate with Naxalites in their own country.
‘A soft corner for the Maoist in Nepal, whose insurgency has caused thousands of lives and greatly destabilized the Himalayan kingdom is a dangerous policy,” Advani warned.
The comments indicate BJP will reconsider New Delhi’s current failed Nepal policy if it is elected in any snap poll either this year or early 2009.
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Complaint lodged with UN against Maoists

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 22 March: Election Commission has lodged a complaint with the UN against Maoists whose combatants in 28 cantonments and camps are freely coming in and out for electioneering.
UNMIN, after security council authorization, is watching the disarmed Maoists.
Commissioner Usha Nepal revealed the Commission had complained to UNMIN against Maoists while talking to reporters in Surkhet Saturday.
Leave for the combatants were cancelled Friday at a tripartite meeting of representatives of UN, Nepal Army and Maoist PLA.
Rival parties charged Maoist fighters were campaigning for Maoist candidate in the 10 April assembly elections.
A photograph printer in The Kathmandu Post showed Saturday showed hundreds of Maoists fighters in combat gear listening to Chairman Prachanda addressing a public meeting in Rolpa.
Prachanda is contesting election from a Rolpa constituency where the Maoist camp is located.
Meanwhile, Maoist violence in electioneering continues unabated.
Maoists overnight overpowered Tika Ghimere, a candidate of conservative RPP in Dhankuta, along with some of his campaigners and threatening the candidate not to contest elections.
Election materials were seized and the candidate was told to suspend electioneering.
Former prime minister and RJP chairman Surya Bahadur Thapa was similarly earlier threatened by Maoists in Dhankuta, his home district.
Thapa charged government turned a deaf ear to complaints.
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