INDIA: India has cautiously welcomed the restoration of multiparty democracy in neighbouring Nepal, promising it wide-ranging assistance.
"We are ready to render unstinted help to the Nepali people in whatever manner they wish," India's defence minister Pranab Mukherjee said yesterday after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs attended by senior ministers.
But despite having played a significant role in defusing the swiftly deteriorating political impasse between Nepali agitators and King Gyanendra by "persuading" the monarch to restore democracy, New Delhi is ominously silent on the Maoists principally responsible for precipitating the crisis that grips the Himalayan kingdom.
India is also believed to have concluded "back-channel" talks with the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) that remains the key to stability in the chaos-ridden kingdom, and convinced it to support the newly-restored government that is backed by Nepal's seven-party coalition.
Official sources said India is also preparing an economic package, including financial aid, to help revive Nepal's economy shattered by nearly three weeks of political agitation, curfew and pitched battles between demonstrators and security forces across the country, if prime minister GP Koirala's government seeks such assistance.
Official sources added that roads from India to land-locked Nepal had been reopened and aid could "flow unhindered" into the Himalayan state.
But a decision by India on resuming arms supplies to Nepal would be taken only after consultations with the new government about its stand on dealing with the decade-long Maoist insurgency that has claimed nearly 14,000 lives.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh hinted at the weekend before leaving on a state visit to Germany that India would "consider" lifting the arms embargo against Nepal, imposed after King Gyanendra's coup in February 2005 in which he dismissed the government and assumed direct rule. India is the RNA's principal supplier of arms
Senior Indian diplomats and policy-makers involved in negotiating with Kathmandu said a multiparty democracy, in which the monarchy plays a symbolic role at best and in which the Maoists abandon violence as a political tool, remains the "best option" for Nepal.
New Delhi remains desperately keen to neutralise Nepali Maoists, who are demanding a greater role for China in their country's affairs and a renegotiation of the 1950 treaty of friendship with India, that is weighted heavily in the latter's favour.
A Nepal free from Maoist insurgency is vital to India, where a growing Maoist rebellion affects 13 of its 29 states. As collaboration between Indian and Nepali Maoists increases,officials admit that some 150 of India's 600 districts are under Maoist control.