More than 70 Maoists have been killed in a fierce clash with Nepal's army, an official said yesterday, as the foreign minister warned the world to accept the king's power grab or watch a communist takeover of the Himalayan country.
Four members of the security forces were also killed in the clash on Monday night at Ganeshpur in Bardiya district, 500km southwest of Kathmandu, army spokesman Brigadier General Dipak Gurung said.
"So far the security forces have recovered the bodies of at least 70 Maoists killed in the clash," Gurung said.
The rebels had carried away others of their dead, he added.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the casualty toll.
The reported death toll is the highest of any clash since King Gyanendra seized absolute power and declared emergency rule last month.
Soon after his power grab he offered to hold unconditional talks with the Maoists, who have been fighting to overthrow the monarchy since 1996 at a cost of some 11,000 lives.
The Maoists, who branded the king a "national betrayer" for the takeover, have not responded to his call, instead staging a two-week transport blockade which ended at the weekend.
The blockade, which the Maoists had said was aimed at getting the king to reverse his seizure of power, reduced transport to a trickle and sent food prices soaring.
Gurung said last month that if the rebels rejected the king's offer of talks they faced a series of military offensives.
"We have to force the Maoists to come to the negotiating table; we are looking for them. Wherever they are we are going to launch offensive operations," he said. "We have to make them weak."
One of the king's appointed ministers, meanwhile, warned in a television interview late on Monday that the world had to choose between supporting the monarch and an eventual return to democracy or allowing Nepal to be taken over by communists.
In the interview, reported yesterday by the state-run news agency RSS, Nepali Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey staunchly defended Gyanendra's seizure of power, saying it had been done at the express wish of the population because politicians were squabbling among themselves and were not dealing with the Maoist insurgency.
The international community has reacted sharply to the power grab, with India and Britain suspending military aid vital to Nepal's fight against the rebels, while the US has warned it will follow suit if Gyanendra does not restore fundamental rights.
Pandey said however that foreign governments were being convinced that the king's steps had been necessary and were accepting his commitment to restore democracy within three years.
"Although there were some initial misunderstanding in the international community over the decision taken by Nepal, the understanding and clarity regarding this matter is growing at present and it was gradually being realized that Nepal made the right decision," he said.
Foreign governments, he added, had a stark choice.
"The international community should give a clear decision whether it will support safeguarding democracy or [help] in preparing the ground for one-party communist authoritarianism," he said.
Human-rights activists and political parties say scores of their leaders are still in detention while strict press censorship is still in place.
The New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said in a report released yesterday that abuses by the military since the king's takeover had increased and expressed concern over the increasing number of "disappearances" of political activists.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing