KATHMANDU - Nepal’s Maoists have surrendered nearly 3,500 weapons as part of a peace deal with the government, but it was not clear if this accounted for all the arms in their possession, the chief UN monitor said on Friday. The United Nations Mission in Nepal, which completed registering former Maoist fighters and weapons at the weekend, said nearly 31,000 ex-guerrillas, most of them unarmed, had turned up at 28 camps set up under the November peace deal. “UNMIN is not and will not be in a position to state whether the weapons it has registered correspond to the full total of weapons held by the Maoist army,” Ian Martin told a news conference.
The UN announcement is the first official account of the size of the Maoist army and its weapons since the peace deal ended a 10-year civil war in which more than 13,000 people were killed. Martin said the arms registered in seven main camps and stored in containers included mortars, machine guns, automatic rifles, shotguns and home-made weapons.
In the past, the Maoists had said they had 35,000 fighters but had not given details of their arms.
| Just one weapon per 10 fighters. Sure. They took turns, right? |