Peace meet calls for talks to resolve conflict

Participants of a two-day Western Nepal Peace Convention, which kicked off in the mid-western town of Nepalgunj on Friday, called on all sides to seek solution of the flaring conflict of the country through talks.

They also urged the Maoists to give up arms and called on the state to give up authoritarian policies, reports from Nepalgunj said.

Speaking at the convention, joint secretary of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Khem Raj Pandit, said solution to the flaring conflict of the country is possible only through dialogues and not through weapons.

“No consensus can be reached without accepting the supremacy of the people, so all sides must sit for talks leaving behind the personnel bias,” he said.

CPN-UML leader Shankar Pokhrel said that end of autocratic monarchy, the initiation of a new constitutional process and inclusive democracy are essential for resolving the present conflict permanently.

Chairman of the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), Subodh Pyakurel called all for finding the solution of the insurgency through peaceful means as the decade long insurgency has claimed lives of 10,000 persons. He further said that families of security forces and political activists had been displaced due to the Maoists.

Democracy and constitutional assembly are the common demands of the Nepalis, senior leftist leader Shakti Lamsal said, adding the state must be restructured to meet these demands.

Janak Raj Giri of the Nepali Congress, Purushottam Dahal of the Human Rights and Peace Society and Surya Thapa of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists also addressed the convention. nepalnews.com pb Feb 25 06