by Kedar Man Singh
KATHMANDU, Aug 25 (AFP) - Nepal's ruling coalition expressed hopes Wednesday for peace talks to end eight years of war as the capital returned to normal after Maoist rebels who control much of the countryside lifted a blockade.
The mainly peasant guerrillas fighting to overthrow the monarchy announced late Tuesday they were lifting a mostly symbolic ring around the city of 1.5 million people but gave the government one month to compromise.
"We hope that peace talks can now be held soon," Madhav Kumar Nepal, head of the mainstream communist party which is the main coalition partner, told AFP.
But Nepal added: "The Maoists need to come forward and give up killings and destruction of infrastructure."
Cars, trucks and buses clogged the streets of the Himalayan capital Wednesday and fruit and vegetable vendors said costs were already going down.
"We didn't suffer a lot of losses in the blockade, but we had to pay five or 10 times more to truckers to cover their risks. Hopefully this won't happen again," said Rajan Bharati, selling vegetables by the bag at a central market.
The withdrawal of the blockade, which was enforced through fear rather than force, came hours after some 29 soldiers were reported killed in northern Nepal in the deadliest Maoist attack in weeks.
Analysts saw Tuesday's events as a bid by the Maoists to prove both their military strength and flexibility. The rebels have staged ruthless attacks around their rural strongholds but have twice entered ceasefires.
A Maoist statement said the blockade was being suspended for "about one month" after appeals from a wide range of society.
"If the government ignores our demands, we will launch protests and blockades more serious than the present ones," the statement warned.
Some 10,000 people have died since 1996 in the civil war. The government has received military and political support from Britain, India and the United States.
On Wednesday, suspected Maoists planted a landmine in the southwestern Banke district that killed a policemen and injured eight others, four of them seriously, police said.
A seven-month-old boy was also wounded when a bomb ripped through the furniture shop of his father, Tilak Paudel, in the western Lamjung district, said police, who believed rebels were responsible.
The Maoists, who are inspired by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, had said the blockade was to press the government to free colleagues allegedly in detention and to stop classifying the guerrillas as terrorists.
It was also seen as an attempt to restart talks on the guerrillas' terms: that the discussions focus on setting up a special assembly to draft a new constitution, in which the Maoists are likely to push to end the monarchy.
Government refusal of the Maoist demand for an assembly led to the collapse of negotiations in 2001 and 2003, which were both followed by surges of bloodshed.
A Western diplomat in Kathmandu said the government was in a position to enter new talks as it was a coalition with the most broad support since 2002, when King Gyanendra sacked the elected government for two years.
"A government with cross-party support is well-positioned to make concessions," the diplomat told AFP.
The Maoists never physically surrounded Kathmandu, where army trucks and helicopters escorted hundreds of vehicles in and out of the city each day, although suspected rebels killed two men in shootings during the blockade.
The rebels, who have virtually replaced the government in vast but remote stretches of the kingdom, have little open support in Kathmandu, whose elite enjoys lifestyles similar to those in the developed world.
"This was a high-risk strategy for the Maoists. They tried to feel the pulse of the people but they paid a high price in alienating the common people of Kathmandu," said Kapil Shrestha, a professor and human rights activist.