Key parties drop support for Nepal's monarchy

A key committee of the country's oldest democratic party, the Nepali Congress, omitted support for the system from the party's statute for the first time in its 60-year-old history, members said.

Their decision will be put to a vote at the party's general convention beginning Tuesday.

"We have removed constitutional monarchy from the partys objectives," senior Congress leader Ram Sharan Mahat said.

"The relevance of monarchy will be kept open from now on and the party is not bound to constitutional monarchy now," he said.

"Constitutional monarchy was a sort of compromise between the king and the political forces in the country and since the king has violated the norms, we are not bound by the monarchy any more," he said.

The Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist (NCP-UML), a royalist as well as leftwing party, made a similar decision.

A meeting of the party's central committee adopted a resolution to push for a democratic republic and an end to the "autocratic monarchy," party general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal said.

King Gyanendra's seizure of power and sacking of the elected government had undermined the "historic people's movement" that led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1990, he said.

Admitting that the gap between him and Nepal's political parties has "widened", King Gyanendra has said he is open for dialogue with the parties provided they make their stand clear on certain issues, including terrorism.

"I have never said that I will never meet them, but there has to be some basis for it," the King said in an interview to the official media.

"The political parties must possess crystal-clear views on four issues- terrorism, good governance and corruption, politicisation in bureaucracy and financial discipline - for talks," he said, adding "if they make clear views on these issues, then there will be room for dialogue".

Gyanendra's overture was broadcast on state radio and television late Monday, even as the heads of the two leading parties said they were no longer committed to having a monarchy in the Himalayan country.