Nepal hit by pre-election bombings

KATHMANDU - Nepal was rocked by two bombings Monday, the latest violence to hit campaigning for this week’s vote on the country’s political future following a peace deal with Maoist rebels.
In the ethnically-tense south, at least 11 people were wounded when attackers threw a bomb at a rally by the Nepali Congress, one of several parties who have vowed to oust unpopular King Gyanendra after Thursday’s vote.
Another person was hurt in Kathmandu in a blast close to a building of the United Nations -- which is monitoring the Himalayan nation’s peace process.
The head of the UN peace mission to Nepal appealed for an end to the pre-poll attacks.
“There has been too much violence and there should be no more violence in this campaign or on polling day,” said Ian Martin at a press conference in Pokhara, a town 140 kilometres (87 miles) west of Kathmandu.
Despite the continued attacks, Martin was optimistic that polls would go ahead as planned on Thursday.
“I do not believe that any last minute efforts that disrupt this poll will be successful,” the senior UN official said, adding an appeal to armed groups to stop their violence.
Police said the bombing in the south near the border with India, an area seen as more supportive of the Hindu monarch, was carried out by “people trying to prevent the elections” from taking place.
A senior local official told AFP that one of around a dozen armed groups in the southern lowlands -- who say they are discriminated against by highlanders and have been demanding federal powers -- claimed responsibility.
Thursday’s polls are for an assembly that will rewrite the constitution, and the main parties and the Maoists have agreed in advance it will also put an end to 240-year-old monarchy.
But the Maoists, who in 2006 ended their decade-long insurgency and vowed to renounce violence, have also been accused of attacks and intimidation.
A UN report said the Maoists, who are taking part in elections for the first time, were the worst perpetrators of pre-poll bullying.
Local journalists say this includes threatening voters by saying their votes are not secret, and vowing to punish those who cast ballots against them.
“Voters must have confidence in the secrecy of the ballot so that they can vote according to their conscience,” UN spokesman Kieran Dwyer told AFP.
Since the Maoists and the country’s mainstream parties signed the peace deal, the former rebels and their youth wing, known as the Young Communist League, have been blamed for continued kidnappings, beatings and extortion.
But Maoist leader Prachanda accused the UN mission in Nepal of being prejudiced towards the ultra-leftists.
The UN reports “are always one-sided... just making the Maoists look bad,” said Prachanda, whose nom de guerre means the “fierce one”.
“Why isn’t it a big deal when Maoists get attacked?” he asked. The UN “needs to make their reports more realistic and rounded.”
The Maoists have said they will respect the election results but warn they will launch major protests if they feel the polls have been rigged against them.
“If Maoists were defeated through riggings, the people will seize power within 10 minutes, not 10 days,” the English-language daily Kathmandu Post quoted Maoist number-two Baburam Bhattarai as saying.
About 1,000 international observers will be in Nepal by Thursday, making this election the most closely-watched in the nation’s history.
In an effort to ensure the polls are peaceful, the government has mobilised tens of thousands of extra police nationwide and banned the sale of alcohol for a week.
The elections will be a key test of the resilience of the peace process, which ended a civil war that claimed at least 13,000 lives.
The peace deal came after Gyanendra was forced to end a period of direct rule in the face of mass protests by the Maoists and the other parties.
The polls have already been postponed twice, partly due to an ethnic uprising in the south.