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Parties haggle over plum portfolios

The talks among four big parties had failed, Friday, because of their inability to divide plum ministerial portfolios to their satisfaction.

According to Kantipur daily, the parties – Nepali Congress (NC), Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), Maoists and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) – could not reach understanding on dividing, particularly the three portfolios – Defense, Home and Finance.

After the Maoists said they want to keep at least two of the three portfolios, Home and Defense, with them, the other parties disagreed.

The daily quotes source as saying that the three parties have told Maoists that since they are one side of the peace process and a party with parallel army, they should not be leading both the ministries that command the state security agencies.

Maoists have replied that they want to keep the ministries as per the tradition set by NC – of keeping defense and home along with prime ministership. It said it was willing to give up Home but not Defense, which the NC is eyeing.

The NC and UML have said that they want Defense and Home portfolios, respectively. The two parties have proposed that Maoists keep Finance and MJF get Foreign Affairs portfolio.

The parties are set to continue talks again on Saturday over these issues even though they could not forge understanding to form a government of national consensus by Friday – the deadline set by the president when he called the Maoists to form such government. nepalnews.com sd Aug 09 08