Nepal: Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, who have been engaged in peace talks for more than a year, are heading for a confrontation over the supply of arms to Nepal's King Gyanendra.
The king wants the weapons to fight the Maoist insurgency which led him to dismiss his government last month and assume direct control.
After the February 1st royal coup, Nepal's principal arms supplier, India, decided to stop all military aid to the Himalayan kingdom until democracy was restored.
Military sources in Kathmandu said that without additional arms the Royal Nepal Army would be "severely strapped" in combating the Maoist rebellion, which has claimed over 11,000 lives there since it erupted nine years ago.
Like India, the United States and Britain also placed an embargo on all sales of defence equipment to Kathmandu until King Gyanendra handed power back to a multi-party government.
However, Pakistan has upset India's strategy by declaring that it would consider sending weapons to Nepal if asked.
"We have offered possibilities [ to Nepal] of [ military] training. We are ready to provide arms if that is required by Nepal," Pakistan's ambassador in Kathmandu, Zamir Akram, told the state-run Rising Nepal newspaper.
Official sources in Delhi said that India's cabinet committee on security, headed by prime minister Manmohan Singh, would meet later this week to discuss the Pakistani offer of assistance to the king.
Meanwhile, police detained hundreds of people in Kathmandu yesterday when they unfurled political party flags and shouted slogans against King Gyanendra's coup.
Maoist rebels set fire to four buses in Itahari, about 500km south-east of Kathmandu. No one was injured in the protest.
The Maoist leader, Prachanda, who uses only one name, placed a notice on the rebel website at the weekend calling for general strikes and a transport blockade to protest at King Gyanendra's takeover.