Defiant Nepal former Prime Minister vows to battle king on the streets

Freed from more than a month of detention, Nepal's twice sacked prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba threatened Saturday to take his supporters on to the streets in a bid to force King Gyanendra to reverse his power grab. "The king should hold dialogue with all political leaders (and form) an all-party government that can hold effective (negotiations) with the Maoist rebels," Deuba told AFP in an interview.
"If he does not do so, we have to launch a non-violent and peaceful political movement across the country to restore political freedoms and human rights," he said, adding that he personally would lead the anti-monarchy movement.
At a press conference later, Deuba said the five main political parties which have been sidelined by the king would unite.
"The five parties will jointly launch a movement against the king's steps of February 1," he said without giving a time frame.
Deuba was freed Friday after being in detention since Gyanendra dismissed his 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.
"The king should ... hand all executive and sovereign rights (back) to a multi-party government," Deuba told AFP at his home on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
"The king can do anything he likes," he said. "He wants to rule (by) himself, he is selfish ... he should remain a constitutional monarch."
Deuba said he had not been badly treated in his detention but that he had not been allowed to read newspapers nor permitted to meet relatives.
He demanded the king release remaining political detainees, including another former prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, and Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist (NCP-UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal.
Human rights groups say more than 400 activists are in detention or under house arrest. But Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey, said on a visit to India earlier in the week "very few people are in detention."