Share this story!            

China backs Nepal against Maoist insurgency

* Beijing sending arms and ammunition supplies to Nepalese army

KATHMANDU: China has dispatched truckloads of arms and ammunition to Nepal to help its ill-equipped army crush a deadly Maoist insurgency, a newspaper report said on Friday.

“China has sent at least 18 truckloads of arms and ammunition to Nepal via the Kodari highway (northeast of Kathmandu) between Tuesday and Wednesday,” the independent Nepalese-language Kantipur daily said.

Nepal’s army said it had no comment on the report.

Nepal has looked to China for arms to combat the Maoist revolt after India, the nation’s biggest arms supplier, the US and Britain suspended military aid following King Gyanendra’s seizure of power nine months ago.

“China had been providing Nepal with non-lethal equipment like telecommunication sets in the past but this is the first time it has provided guns and ammunition to Nepal,” the newspaper said.

“On Tuesday, 12 trucks entered Nepal while the following day, six more vehicles carrying arms entered Nepal from Khasa in Tibet,” the daily reported, citing unidentified sources.

An army spokesman declined to comment on the report, which did not identify the nature of the weapons. “Since it concerns the security of the nation, no comment,” army spokesman Dipak Gurung told AFP. Gyanendra dismissed the government February 1 and cracked down on civil liberties, saying the move was necessary to end the insurgency.

The Maoists declared a three-month truce in September in their insurgency launched in 1996 to topple the monarchy and install a communist republic.

This week, a seven-party opposition alliance and the rebels announced an agreement to launch a joint movement to restore democracy in Nepal under which the guerrillas would lay down their arms and join the political mainstream. Details of the pact, however, still have to be formalised.

“The Chinese army escorted the trucks carrying arms to the Nepal-China border and handed them over to Nepalese army in plainclothes and transferred the goods to civilian trucks when they entered Nepal,” the Kantipur daily said. In October, China, an important donor to impoverished Nepal, promised almost one million dollars in help to its army to crush the insurrection that has claimed more than 12,000 lives.

Royal Nepal Army chief of staff General Pyar Jung Thapa won the pledge on a visit to Beijing where Chinese leaders threw their support behind the fight against the rebels. afp

Home | Foreign

Share this story!