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Nepal Maoists announce three-month cessation of violence
KATHMANDU - The Maoists engaged in a ten-year-old armed insurgency to set up a communist republic in Nepal on Saturday announced the cessation of violence for three months beginning on Saturday.

In a statement faxed to media offices, the top Maoist leader Prachanda, whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal, said that his party announced the ceasefire in deference to the people’s “aspiration for peace and democracy”.
What would a Maoist know about that?
The Maoist ceasefire announcement came just one month before the biggest Hindu religious festival of Dasain, which is observed all over Nepal. It is during this festival that the people return to their homes in villages and rural Nepal for reunions with their families.

The Maoists hoped that the ceasefire would “motivate both national and international forces who want to see peace in Nepal and encourage them to take new initiatives to end the current political crisis in the country”, the statement said.

The Maoist statement said the Maoists would not undertake any offensive activities with effect from Saturday but added that the Maoists would “remain in a position of active defence and resist if there is an offensive from the side of the enemy (the government)”.
Posted by: Steve White 2005-09-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=128537