Battle over Nepal's peace process

By Dhruba Adhikary

KATHMANDU - Hopes that a United Nations special mission would ensure that Nepal's peace process went smoothly are fading due to growing mistrust between the interim government and officials attached to the world body. The dispute mainly revolves around former combatants associated with Maoist rebels who agreed to renounce a decade-long armed insurgency in 2006.

While murmurs of government discontent were already audible, the row between UN and government officials became a matter of intense controversy last week when a senior visiting UN official publicly criticized Nepal's political party leaders for accusing the mission of inaction.

"We are dismayed that some commentators try to hold the mission [United Nations Mission in Nepal, or UNMIN] responsible for situations and shortcomings that by very insistence of the parties themselves, the mission has no capacity to control," B Lynn Pascoe, under secretary general for political affairs, told a Kathmandu audience on March 11. "This is absurd and should come to an end."

Using expressions such as "boring arguments" and "cheap shots", his remarks infuriated several members of the governing coalition, who took up the issue at a subsequent cabinet meeting. Some of the ministers ostensibly raised the question of diplomatic norms.

Pascoe, before taking up his present UN post in early 2007, was a career American diplomat with ambassadorial stints in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Kathmandu's chattering classes have found fault with the extreme positions taken by both sides. "It was unnecessary for the cabinet to issue a statement ... a simple demarche by the foreign secretary, not even minister, would have sufficed," Sridhar K Khatri, head of the South Asia Center for Policy Studies, told local media.

Pascoe's speech on Thursday alluded to two notable aspects of the UNMIN's limited mandate since it started in January 2007: its duty to assist in organizing elections for the constituent assembly and to monitor the flow of arms.

The election was held in April 2008, and the elected assembly is at present working to draw up a new constitution for a republican Nepal, replacing the monarchy. The deadline for the promulgation of new statute is May 28.

The second issue, monitoring the arms and troops of the Nepalese Army and the Maoists, is thornier than the first. Ideally, the anomaly of keeping two armies in one country would end before the promulgation of a new constitution. The committees formed to organize the former rebels' integration and rehabilitation have been working for months without substantive progress.

Meanwhile, the men and women in rebel uniform, cantoned in UN-monitored camps, are kept waiting as their political masters continuously engage in negotiations over their possible integration into Nepal's national army and other security agencies. The ex-guerrillas number at around 19,600, according to registrations lists, after 4,000 were "discharged" last month for being minors.

Authorities in the interim government say that the number of combatants in camps has noticeably decreased over time, yet they continue to draw daily allowances and use these resources to conduct communist propaganda. It was on this basis that Peace and Reconstruction Minister Rakom Chemjong sought UNMIN's help to determine the actual number of combatants. However, the UNMIN declined saying that the relevant peace accords require it to maintain a degree of confidentiality.

"UNMIN, contrary to popular misconception, has been given no mandate or capacity to police the cantonments," the UN envoy said. "Its access to information about the status of the two armies or their numbers depends entirely on their voluntary cooperation."

Minister for Information and Communications Shanker Pokharel insisted that authorities were not seeking any classified information; rather they were trying to obtain UNMIN's cooperation in ascertaining the number of combatants in the camps.

The dispute escalated as Defense Minister Bidhya Bhandari referred to the UNMIN as "the Maoist party's tail". UNMIN chief Karin Landgren wrote to the prime minister asking for Bhandari's remarks to be retracted. "This statement is untrue and defames the United Nations and its founding principles," Republica newspaper quoted her as saying in the letter.

Interim Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and his colleagues continue to cite the UN's position on combatant numbers as an obstacle to the peace process. But observers are perplexed at the government's inability to obtain the information directly from the Maoists, who are now a duly registered political party that commands nearly 40% of the 601 seats in the constituent assembly. The government also has a police force and intelligence agencies at its disposal.

Geopolitical plank

Some observers say that in its attempts to marginalize the UNMIN, the government is pandering to neighboring nations that would rather see the UN withdraw from strategically placed Nepal.

Nepal has traditionally served as a buffer zone between India and China, and neither Delhi nor Beijing seems willing to see that position shaken by Western powers. Even the presence of the UN, which deploys staff across the world, is a sensitive matter for them.

When it comes to the question of influence over Nepal, for once the rivals' interests may converge. China can help India, and itself, by moving against an extension of the UNMIN's mandate at the Security Council - which renews the UNMIN's tenure - where China has a permanent seat.

The influential Kantipur newspaper has editorially censured the "childish reaction" of the government, saying that attempts to sideline the UN and rest of the international community are motivated by a desire to appease India and could damage Nepal's credibility.

Analysts in Kathmandu also say the government's attempt to marginalize the UNMIN is undemocratic as the UN mission was formed at the request of a seven-party alliance and the Maoists.

"The government is acting all righteous and pretending it is an affront to sovereignty that UNMIN is not providing the information it has requested. What is forgotten is that the government is only one part of the peace process," wrote a Nepali Times columnist.

With the current UN mission's mandate scheduled to end in less than two months, and the chances of Nepal producing a new constitution by the May 28 deadline growing ever slimmer due to differences on fundamental issues such as forms of governance and federalism, the peace process is likely to stutter.

To avert a crisis, options now being discussed include an extension of the deadlines by another six months. The other proposal is to issue a shortened constitution, leaving contentious matters in the care of a commission of experts who would later report their recommendations to a newly elected parliament. But no consensus has yet emerged, and one is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Dhruba Adhikary is a Kathmandu-based journalist.