Nepali parties wary of king's visit to India

King Gyanendra and Queen Komal will arrive in New Delhi on December 23 on an 11-day visit that will also see the royal couple travel to the neighbouring cities of Dehradun, Lucknow and Patna as well as West Bengal.

The visit has been in the pipeline since Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's trip to New Delhi in September, generating much speculation and controversy in Nepal.

Though the Nepalese foreign office last week finally announced the date of the monarch's arrival in New Delhi, no further details were offered, fuelling the feeling that it was the palace that was drawing up the itinerary and not the cabinet.

"In other countries where the king is a constitutional head, his foreign trips are planned by the foreign ministry and the government," commented Jhalanath Khanal, who heads the foreign affairs section of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, the most dominant partner in the coalition government.

"But in Nepal nobody knows what the agenda of the royal visit is. Even the ministers from our party are not aware of it. Under such circumstances the visit seems downright mysterious."

The communist leader said the Maoist insurgency was a grave threat to both Nepal and India.

While in Nepal the insurgents have been able to set up their self-styled "people's government" in some remote areas, India too has seen a proliferation of the Maoist movement in the last two years, Khanal said.