Prachanda offers opposition top jobs to avert crisis

Pushpa Kamal

The leader of Nepal's Maoists proposed a new unity government yesterday, offering political rivals the pick of the top cabinet posts in a bid to end a deadlock crippling the restive Himalayan nation.
Maoist party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal told AFP he would let his rivals in the two largest opposition parties choose their ministries if they agreed to unite behind a Maoist premier in a cross-party administration.
"We are willing to allow Nepali Congress to choose the ministries. Factions within both the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist Leninists are positive about this," Dahal said in a rare interview.
The deal would provide hope of lasting consensus among Nepal's warring political factions, who have been ordered by the president to form a new unity government by tomorrow and end months of uncertainty in the impoverished country.
Dahal, better known by his civil war nom-de-guerre Prachanda, or "the fierce one", even entertained the possibility of one of the opposition groups leading a new government.
Nepal has been run by a caretaker Maoist-led government since the collapse in May of an interim assembly that had failed in its main task of drawing up the constitution following the 10-year insurgency that ended in 2006.
The caretaker administration, unable to win support for a full budget, has so far allocated just 45 million dollars to roads, hospitals, schools and other development projects, a tenth of its normal spend.