A meeting of the top leaders -- NC President Girija Prasad Koirala, Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and UML Chairman Jhala Nath Khanal -- at Koirala´s residence in Maharajgunj agreed to finalize the matter by Friday.
“We will meet again on Friday morning and take the decision on the high-level mechanism,” Dahal told reporters after the meeting.
NC Vice President Ram Chandra Poudel, who was also present in the meeting, said that Dahal and Khanal wanted to consult with their parties before finalizing the matter.
“We decided to form the mechanism in the next meeting as both Dahal and Khanal wanted to hold further discussions and come with the parties´ mandate,” Poudel said.
Prime Minister Madhav Nepal, who was scheduled to be in the meeting, reached Koirala´s residence a few minutes after Dahal and Khanal left after holding about half-an-hour long meeting with the NC president.
Nepal said the meeting focused on preparing a tentative structure of the proposed mechanism. He said the talks were moving ahead in positive direction.
“Had we formed the body earlier, we wouldn´t have faced problems that we did,” NC leader Krishna Prasad Sitaula quoted Koirala as saying. The octogenarian leader also informed other leaders that if his health condition didn´t allow him to attend regular meetings, any other leader from the NC would represent him.
The issue of resolving the presidential move also surfaced during the meeting, but Koirala urged other leaders to look forward to the future and move ahead with new perspectives instead of complicating things by evoking past incidents.
The leaders had agreed to form the mechanism a couple of times earlier. In August last year, Koirala and Dahal had decided to form the mechanism to give momentum to the constitution writing and peace process.
The three parties had also formed a task force comprising two members from each of the parties earlier to finalize the Terms of Reference (TOR) after agreeing in principle to form the mechanism to steer the ongoing peace process.
Sitaula said that the leaders seemed to have acknowledged the need to form such a mechanism.
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