During a meeting of the High-Level Political Mechanism Thursday, the three largest political parties had agreed to hold day-long talks on Tuesday to reach an agreement on completing the peace process and constitution drafting. For this, the parties planned to clinch a package deal that includes power-sharing with the Maoists. [break]
The bilateral meeting of the NC and UML on Monday reached a tentative agreement to keep all the options, including government change, open if the Maoists agreed to the agenda for peace and constitution drafting.
As agreed earlier, the three-party meeting Tuesday will hold talks on six agenda items: review of all the peace agreements including the 12-point pact and their current status, removing mutual inter-party mistrust, ending the current political deadlock, agreement on integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants, constitution drafting and power-sharing.
"If the Maoists agree on the other five agenda items, a new political environment will be created for a national unity government. We will then be ready for a national unity government," said UML leader Bharat Mohan Adhikary, who participated in the meeting.
Ram Chandra Paudel, Krishna Prasad Sitaula and Prakash Sharan Mahat from the NC and Jhalanath Khanal, KP Sharma Oli and Adhikary from UML were present at the meeting.
The parties also agreed to jointly push for the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants before the constitution drafting, return of seized properties, dismantling of the semi-military structure of the Young Communist League (YCL) and formation of a state restructuring commission, to reach a package deal.
However, the Maoists have given top priority to ending the current political deadlock which includes "correction" of the president´s move and formation of a Maoist-led national unity government.
"We will hold talks to resolve all the issues in their entirety. But we will mainly focus on ending the political deadlock and removing mutual distrust," said Maoist Vice-Chairman Narayankaji Shrestha. He said that the constitution-drafting process has already slid into crisis and the political parties should bail it out.
According to sources, the parties will also deliberate on extension of the Constituent Assembly (CA) deadline that expires on May 28, 2010.
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