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Nepal boosts patrols to end Maoist blockade

REUTERS, Kathmandu
Nepal ordered more troops and helicopters to patrol highways and break an indefinite Maoist blockade across the nation, a government minister said yesterday, in the first test of nerves since King Gyanendra took power.
Traffic remained thin across the landlocked nation on the second day of the transport shutdown called by the Maoists to force Gyanendra to withdraw his decision to sack the government, impose a state of emergency and suspend civil liberties.
Information and Communications Minister Tanka Dhakal said soldiers had stepped up patrols and set up pickets along the highways to bolster the confidence of people, shaken by nine years of a conflict that has killed more than 11,000 people.
"People are feeling a little more secure and more are coming out," he said, adding the government had offered to pay immediate compensation if any vehicle was attacked while defying the guerrilla ban. So far, there were no reports of violence.
"We have put more troops, there are helicopters providing air patrol along the highways," Dhakal said.
The Maoists, who are fighting to topple the constitutional monarchy, successfully enforced a blockade of hill-ringed Kathmandu last August merely on the basis of threats, and
without any physical show of force.
Gyanendra, who blamed the previous government for failing to contain the Maoist revolt, has ordered a crackdown on the Maoists in their remote mountain hide-outs and thick jungles and force them to resume talks, cut off since August 2003.
The king's decision this month to take absolute power has prompted protests from many countries.
The guerrillas, who want to install a communist republic in Nepal, one of the world's 10 poorest nations, said on Saturday the king's power grab had ended all possibility for early peace talks.
Instead, they have urged the country's warring political parties to unite with them to fight the monarchy.
Life in high security Kathmandu appeared unaffected, and there was no sign of panic buying in city markets despite the rebel blockade.
On Saturday, the first day of the strike, only 137 vehicles entered the capital through the main checkpoint of Nagdhunga, compared with 1,659 vehicles the previous day, the daily Himalayan Times said, quoting the army.
Residents reached by phone in the towns of Biratnagar and Janakpur in the east told Reuters there was little traffic in the towns and on the highways.