Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa said Friday that Nepal will fully respect human rights as it battles Maoist rebels amid increasing international concern over spiralling violence in the kingdom.
Thapa said security forces were being given instructions to follow the Geneva Conventions which govern the rules of war.
"The government is enforcing the law to avoid indiscriminate arrest and disappearance of people without reason," Thapa told a press conference.
"Detainees will not be subjected to physical or mental torture or inhuman treatment," he said.
Human rights groups say both troops and rebels have abducted their opponents during the insurgency aimed at establishing a communist state, which has claimed an estimated 9,500 lives since 1996.
Amnesty International on Wednesday expressed concern at reports that the rebels, in a bloody raid on the north-western town of Bedi, took hostage a number of people including the Myagdi district's chief administrator Sagarmani Parajuli.
The Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said the hostages were being treated in accordance with international standards.
In a new statement issued Friday, the elusive guerrilla chief praised UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for his appeal on Monday to both sides to stop fighting.
"Our party's revolt and bloodshed will find a peaceful solution if a conducive atmosphere for expressing the will of the people is ensured," said Dahal, a former schoolteacher better known as "Prachanda," or "The Fierce."
"We have been calling for UN mediation to hold a peace dialogue to establish the people's sovereignty in the country," Prachanda said.
Reiterating Annan's statement, Britain's special envoy to Nepal Jeffrey James on Friday called on both sides to resume negotiations which broke down in August.
"The longer it (the war) continues, the greater the suffering and hardship for the Nepalese people and the impact on the Nepalese economy and the harder it will be to negotiate a solution," James told reporters at the close of a five-day visit that included talks with King Gyanendra.
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