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Nepal frees Deuba, 17 others

AFP, Kathmandu
Nepal freed yesterday former premier Sher Bahadur Deuba and 17 other detainees held since King Gyanendra seized power last month, a party official said, amid mounting pressure on the nation to restore civil liberties.
"Our party president Deuba and other senior leaders were set free today (Friday)," Nepali Congress Democratic party secretary Jivan Prem Shrestha told AFP in the capital Kathmandu. King Gyanendra dismissed Deuba’s multi-party government on February 1 and seized control of Nepal, imposing emergency rule and vowing to tackle an increasingly bloody Maoist revolt that has claimed 11,000 lives since 1996.
"In the process of liberalisation of the political situation in Nepal, other political detainees are also being released gradually," a cabinet source said, giving no further details.
However former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, Nepal's first
elected premier, remained under house arrest, with human rights activists and members of his Nepali Congress party increasingly concerned about the 82-year-old's health.
Madhav Kumar Nepal, a senior leader of the main opposition Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist Leninist which formed part of the dismissed coalition government, was also still under house arrest.
The release of the 18 came after a day after security officials freed eight other party leaders and activists.
On Thursday, Nepal's royal-appointed foreign minister, Ramesh Nath Pandey, said "certain rights of the people ... will be restored sooner rather than later". But he gave no details and set no timeframe.
Nepal has come under increasing pressure from the world community, including international donors, to free political detainees.
Human rights groups say over 400 activists are in detention or under house arrest. But Pandey, said on a visit to India earlier in the week "very few people are in detention."
The World Bank said this week it was freezing the release of more aid to Nepal while it assessed events there, including the protection of human rights.
Nepal relies on international donor aid and loans for more than half its development budget to prop up an economy devastated by the Maoist insurgency.
India has joined Britain in cutting off military aid to the Hindu kingdom. Its ill-equipped army depends heavily on the help to fight the rebels, who are battling to install a communist republic.
The United States has said it is mulling similar action.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has said it is ready to provide arms and counter-insurgency training to help Nepal face down the Maoist revolt.
"We are ready to share our experience and, hopefully, this will help Nepal," Islamabad's outgoing ambassador here Zamir Akram said in an interview published Friday in the state-run Rising
"So, we are ready to help in whatever way we can. Pakistan is also facing terrorist threats on our western border. We have developed some kind of expertise, especially in the use of high-tech equipment by the terrorists," he told the state-run English daily.
"We, within the Saarc level and at the bilateral level, have offered an exchange of information," he added, referring to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) which groups Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
"We have offered possibilities of training. We are also ready to provide arms if that is required by Nepal."
Nepal, calling the king's power grab an "internal" matter.
Analysts have said Gyanendra's seizure of power has overtones of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's coup in 1999. Musharraf argued that the world should back him rather than give a boost to Islamic radicals.
After seizing power, Gyanendra said he acted to save Nepal from falling into chaos as a result of a failure by political parties to end the insurgency.