NEPAL: Nepal's King Gyanendra yesterday promised to restore democracy in three years. He also called on India and the UK to reactivate military aid which they froze after he sacked his government on February 1st and assumed direct control of his impoverished country to help him fight the growing Maoist insurgency, writes Rahul Bedi
In his first comments to the Nepali media after his power grab, the king insisted that he still upholds democratic principles and that his kingdom needed arms to fight Maoists, whose nine-year struggle for a republican state has claimed 11,000 lives.
"Three years is the maximum we have asked for (to restore democracy). If I can, I will definitely shorten that period," the king was quoted as saying by The Kathmandu Post.
"It will depend on various factors. Let me see if the terrorists (Maoists ) are tamed," he said. As the Nepali people have chosen an agenda of peace, the international community must provide support (arms) to deal with the threat of terrorism, the king added.
Meanwhile, security officials in New Delhi remain apprehensive about Nepal being tempted to use China's support to offset India's belligerence to the coup and the possibility of crippling measures like sanctions and a blockade by it on Kathmandu.
Looking to China - that has declared the king's "coup" an "internal affair" - as an ally against India has always been a "fallback" option for Nepal, dictated to it by geography.
Over the decades India, the region's largest state, has been closely linked with Nepal, controlling as it does the land-locked kingdom's vital transit routes southwards. King Gyanendra's father, King Mahendra, who harboured virulent anti-India sentiments, adroitly played the "China card" against India through the 1950s and 1960s by entering into enhanced economic and diplomatic relations with Beijing, much to New Delhi's ire.
India's discomfort was at that juncture aggravated by its deteriorating relations with China, with whom it had fought a disastrous war in 1962 over a territorial dispute that remains unresolved.
And though Sino-Indian relations have improved considerably over the past decade, security officials in Delhi fear that King Gyanendra might, like his father, contemplate a "counter-balancing" strategy by wooing China.
They point to the closure a few days before the coup of two Tibetan Refugee Welfare Offices (TRWO) in Kathmandu associated with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, a move many claimed was initiated to appease Beijing. Recently, China announced a raft of economic and trade measures with Nepal, like a bus service from Kathmandu to Lhasa and expanded transport links with its southern Himalayan region.
China is building a second road link - King Mahendra constructed the earlier one in the 1960s - between Kathmandu and Tibet to shorten Hindu Nepal's access to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar, amongst Hinduism's holiest pilgrim spots.
Beijing also wants to begin constructing additional roads linking Tibet with eastern and western Nepal to augment access between the two sides. "With an upgraded infrastructure in Tibet and links with several Nepali players, Beijing has leverage over Nepal, which Mao Zedong had described as one of the fingers on the Tibetan palm," security analyst Brahma Chellaney said.
Beijing also plans to enhance connectivity between Nepal and Tibet through optic fibre links and energy pipelines and bringing the strategic China-Tibet railway closer to the Himalayan kingdom.
China was keen that the increasing number of Chinese tourists visiting the Himalayan kingdom be granted the same preferential treatment of near-unrestricted access accorded to those coming from India. Nepal, for its part, wanted to forge a free-trade agreement with China, similar to the one it had with India.
Western intelligence sources said China appeared to be "hedging" its bets on the Maoist problem and, unlike India, had refrained from becoming actively involved in dealing with it.
But it was "uneasy" with Washington's limited presence in the kingdom.