Nepal's Prime Minister Prachanda announced his resignation Monday after an attempt by his Maoist government to sack the head of the army was blocked by the president.

' I have resigned from the post of prime minister from today for the protection of democracy and peace," Prachanda said in a televised address to the nation.

Nepal s Maoist government fired General Rookmangud Katawal for refusing to integrate former Maoist rebel soldiers into the regular army under the terms of a 2006 peace deal that

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ended a decade of civil war.

But President Ram Baran Yadav, a member of the main opposition party, has told the head of the army -- traditionally a bastion of Nepal's elite and the former monarchy-- to stay put.

"The move by the president is. an attack on this infant democracy and the peace process," Prachanda said, accusing the president of having taken an "unconstitutional and undemocratic decision."

"The interim constitution does not give any right to the president to act as a parallel power," he said.

The former rebel leader has been prime minister of Nepal for just eight months. Prachanda's real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal, but he chooses to go by a nom-de-guerre meaning "fierce one."

His resignation follows months of worsening tensions between the ex-rebels and their former foes in the military.

The Maoists want their fighters, currently confined to United Nations-supervised camps, to be given jobs in the regular army.

But the army has refused to take in the 19,000 hardened guerrillas, whom it views as politically indoctrinated.

The army also accuses the Maoists of not fulfilling commitments to dismantle the paramilitary structure of their feared youth wing and not returning property grabbed during the civil war, which left around 13,000 dead.

Prachanda. a former school teacher, led a decade-long insurgency before signing up for peace in 2006, when the rebels vowed to renounce violence and embrace multi-party democracy.

The Maoists won elections to the new constitutional assembly in April 2008, positioning themselves to push through what they pledged would be a radical programme of reform in one of the world's poorest countries.