• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Nepal: as end of UN mission nears, envoy urges consensus on arms monitoring

10 January 2011 – With only five days left before the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) ends, the world body’s envoy to the country once again today urged all parties to the peace process there to reach consensus on the crucial issue of the monitoring of arms and armed forces after the mission departs.

“Even at this late date, I remain very hopeful that the parties will find the flexibility to resolve this issue,” Karin Landgren, the Secretary-General Representative to Nepal, told a news conference in Kathmandu, her final briefing to the media in her current capacity.

UNMIN was set up in 2007 after the Government and Maoists reached a peace agreement ending a war that claimed 13,000 lives.

Ms. Landgren told the Security Council in New York last week that there has been little progress on the most critical issues of forming a new government and integrating 19,000 Maoist former rebels, and scant advances on the drafting of a new constitution.

The political mission is due to end on Saturday when its Security Council mandate expires. The mandate included monitoring the management of arms and armed personnel of the Nepal and Maoist armies, while the parties themselves were to complete the reintegration and rehabilitation of the former Maoist rebels either with the Nepal army and police or in other sectors.

Mr. Landgren told the Council that while arms monitoring has been “strikingly successful,” the parties are yet to agree on a monitoring mechanism to replace UNMIN.

“With the parties unable to make significant progress on the issue of integration and rehabilitation during several extensions of the mission’s mandate, follow-on monitoring arrangements became necessary,” she told reporters today.

“Since last year, I have sought clarity on the status of the Agreement on Monitoring of the Management of Arms and Armies, the Joint Monitoring Coordination Committee and on the parties’ planned supervisory arrangements.

“My letter of 13 December to Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and UCPN-M [Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist] chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal outlined what the UN could and could not do, and stressed that a consensus request would be required for the UN to loan monitoring equipment to any future arms monitor,” she said.

She said she remained hopeful that the parties will find a resolution to the deadlock over the monitoring of arms and armed forces.

“Throughout Nepal’s peace process, the parties have shown that they are capable of putting aside their differences at the most critical times to forge last-minute consensus,” Ms. Landgren added.