NEPAL’S RULING Maoists sacked the country’s army chief for insubordination yesterday, splitting the fragile ruling coalition and jeopardising a 2006 peace deal that ended the country’s decade-long civil war.
The removal of Gen Rook Mangud Katawal, who was four months away from retirement, follows weeks of tension between the general and the government led by prime minister Puspa Kamal Dahal, the former Maoist guerrilla leader, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda.
The premier’s Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) accused the army chief of disobeying their instructions not to recruit 2,800 fresh troops, amid a dispute about the integration of 19,000 former Maoist combatants – now being held in United Nations camps – into the security forces.
Nepal’s 100,000-man army is highly suspicious of its former adversaries, the Maoist rebels, while the Maoists accuse the army of refusing to accept the supremacy of the civilian government.
However, both the Maoists’ political allies and their opponents, as well as foreign countries backing the peace process, had warned that to sack the army chief could precipitate a return to hostilities by the former adversaries.
President Ram Baran Yadav, who has links to the opposition Nepali Congress Party, refused to approve the sacking, or to recognise the man named by the Maoists as the new army chief, Gen Kul Bahadur Khadka, who was Gen Katawal’s second-in-command.
Rajendra Dahal, the president’s press adviser, said President Yadav had sent a letter to the government stating that the sacking was illegal.
Gen Katawal is also expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)