(Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Thursday extended the mandate of the U.N. mission in Nepal for another six months but urged the government to resume a stalled peace process to allow the mission to leave in January.
Under a 2006 deal that ended a decade-long civil war between the government and Maoist rebels in the Himalayan state, the United Nations supervises compliance by the former combatants with an agreement on their arms and armies.
The 250-person U.N. mission, known as UNMIN, has arms monitors based at camps for former Maoist fighters where weapons are stored and at a weapons storage site in a Nepal army barracks.
But a political crisis since the Maoists walked out of the government in May in a dispute over their attempt to fire the country's army chief has stalled the peace process.
A report last week by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the crisis had prevented UNMIN from completing its work because of a failure by the Nepalese parties to agree on the future of the more than 19,000 Maoist fighters in the camps.
The Security Council had originally hoped UNMIN would wind up in July, but Nepal asked the United Nations this month for a further extension, a request supported by Ban.
The council resolution passed on Thursday agreed to prolong UNMIN until Jan. 23, but called on Nepal's government to take measures to allow the mission to finish its job by then.
It said current arrangements for monitoring arms and armed personnel were intended as "temporary measures, rather than long-term solutions, and cannot be maintained indefinitely."
"It is our hope ... that in the coming period the government and parties will take the peace process forward, creating the conditions for the mission to complete its mandated tasks," said the U.N. envoy to Nepal, Karin Landgren.
"Critical political decisions need to be taken soon on the modalities and the number of Maoist army personnel to be integrated into the security forces," she told reporters.
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