Nepal's King Gyanendra came under intense political pressure Tuesday as a national strike called by Maoist rebels brought the kingdom to a shuddering halt and tens of thousands of activists staged fresh protests near his Kathmandu palace.
Streets in the capital were near-deserted while schools, businesses, factories and stores remained closed.
Government offices were open but with no buses or private transport running, bureaucrats were forced to walk to and from work.
Officials and residents in the major cities of Pokhara, Bhaktapur, and Lalitpur reported similar scenes, while the strike also paralysed Bhairahawa and Palpa districts and other southern regions, officials contacted by telephone told AFP.
The strike also affected the turnout at two protest rallies called Tuesday by an alliance of five political parties which have been behind a campaign to force the king to reverse his 2002 dismissal of the elected government, party leaders said.
In Ratna park, near the palace in Kathmandu, only about 20,000 activists turned out for the sixth straight day of protests, a sharp drop from the 50,000 who had attended on Monday.
In Bhaktapur, the ancient capital, some 10,000 protestors staged a public rally marked by the chanting of angry anti-monarchy slogans.
The five-party alliance had asked the Maoists to hold off their three-day strike, saying it would hamper efforts to transport protestors to the demonstrations, but their pleas went unheeded.
The Maoist rebels, whose insurgency has left more than 9,500 people dead since 1996, are sworn enemies of the king and have a different agenda to the that of the parties - they want a communist republic.
The Maoists' elusive leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, has offered moral support to the alliance, saying they share a common cause against the "feudal forces" but an outright coalition against the king appears unlikely because of long-held mutual suspicion.
King Gyanendra, apparently undaunted by the wave of agitation and bloody attacks by Maoists in various parts of the country, is touring rural areas and was Tuesday to visit Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, in south-western Nepal.
The king has largely ignored the alliance, saying his priorities were to crush the Maoists and root out corruption left over from the parties' rule. He has promised elections by April 2005, but the parties demand they be held under a "neutral" government.
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