KATHMANDU - NepalÂ’s embattled king cracked down on a major pro-democracy rally planned Thursday amid a powerful Indian diplomatic intervention and dire warnings about the survival of the worldÂ’s last Hindu monarchy. King Gyanendra has so far refused to budge despite a mounting death toll, but so have his subjects who have poured out on to the streets for most of the last 14 days of a general strike that has crippled the Himalayan kingdom.Strike leaders and a seven-party opposition alliance that has Maoist rebel support have vowed to fight on, until multi-party democracy is restored. With a shoot-on-sight curfew in force after four more people were shot dead Wednesday, the stage was set for another street battle in the capital and for a showdown between giant republican neighbour India and the absolute ruler in Nepal.
New Delhi’s special envoy Karan Singh, whose father ceded the princely state of Kashmir to India in 1947, was to meet the king later Thursday. “I wish for peace in Nepal and I am optimistic,” senior diplomat Singh said after arriving in Kathmandu.
| Daddy set a great example of how to get peace, didn't he? |
“The prime minister has asked me me to go to Nepal to take a message to the king and also make a general assessment of the situation,” said Singh, whose wife is the grand-daughter of the last Rana dynasty prime minister of Nepal.
Former Indian ambassador to Nepal, Deb Mukharji, described the mission as grave. Singh was sent “to impress on the king that a very serious change of course is required. Otherwise the future of the monarchy is in jeopardy,” he said.
Rabindra Khanal, professor of politics at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University said the king was not about to yield. “The king is not going to give up easily. Confrontation will continue,” Khanal warned with the death toll already 10 and hundreds wounded. “He is not in a hurry to resolve the political crisis. He is still trying.”